Reach the Horizon
by KF fan
Summary: In the days after Lightspeed, Kid Flash wants to convert Jinx from villain to good and for her to be with him. He'd also like to become a full fledged Titan. Can he succeed? [Yes it's long but give a chapter a try. You might find it goes pretty quick]
1. Kid Flash

Kid Flash sped through Jump City and its suburbs again and again, running circles one, then two, then three then four then five miles across cutting across the interstates and any other streets in his path. Cross traffic was literally standing still for Kid Flash, as he moved so fast that his tight red bottom and yellow topped uniform was barely a faint blur to motorists.

An average person somehow moving with him would have only seen a blurred transition from sights that generally suggested the warehouse district of the city to sights that looked like the highway interchange area to sights that looked the downtown to southern residential areas, each whisking by in a fraction of a second. But Kid Flash could see every detail on the streets and buildings, every expression on every pedestrian's face as he patrolled on long, speed force aided, impossibly fast strides.

He poured on the speed. "Eight . . . Nine . . . Ten! There. Ten!" He stopped on the steps of City Hall and caught his breath, bending over hands on knees next to a couple tourists to whom he winked as they snapped pictures of a real live superhero. He'd like to have gotten away before they asked for an autograph but it took him a minute to regain his energy once exhausted. He signed and zipped away, just a red and yellow blur heading down a boulevard.

He'd promised to do ten circuits of the City in his usual fashion before finishing for the day. And it was important to him to be finished. Usually, Kid Flash looked forward to finding a bank robbery or theft or assault of some sort to thwart both for the challenge and to know that he wasn't patrolling in vain. But this afternoon was special. He didn't want to be waiting around for cops or emt's at the credit union while the minutes ticked away, because some guy with a ball point pen in his jacket pocket had gone up to the teller's window. Not today.

It'd been two weeks since he'd last seen her. Those eyes. Those lips. That face. That figure.

Sigh.

He hadn't thought of much else since then. It had nearly driven super energetic Kid Flash crazy , to know that he could probably find her in a second but that he couldn't. He shouldn't. He'd gone back to his tiny bedroom in his family's worse than modest little house and peeled off his Kid Flash uniform the night of their first meeting, took a shower and then jumped into his bed and thought about her.

He wondered exactly what it was he was feeling for her. This was new. This was deeper. This wasn't like with the girls in school or that he'd met at raves. "I can't blow this. I can't blow this" he told himself over and over while music played softly on his clock radio. "I can't approach her like a-a jerk". She really is different. She's special. Beautiful and brainy and strong willed. I-I've got to be mature . . smart about this.

Kid Flash lay there in his bed looking at the swirls in the plaster of the ceiling for 3 hours, as though it was a magic eye ceiling that would reveal the answers to his questions if he just stared long and hard enough. But the answers didn't come to him at once like suddenly seeing the embedded magic eye picture. And they weren't revealed answers. They were decisions that he came to after much hard thought. He decided he couldn't see her right away. He had to give her time. He was asking her to make a huge change in her life. He couldn't expect her to do that all of a sudden, almost on the spur of the moment. If Jinx was going to leave the life of a villain it couldn't happen overnight. He had to give her time to mull over the idea. He had to give her time. He had to let the possibility soak in. If he didn't, her strong will would just become resistance and she would push him away and push the idea away. Can't push her and can't save her. Have to just offer her a hand and-and show her.

He smiled at the irony of he being the one to fix her life given how his was going. He'd been a clean cut kid at 11 years old, an athletic, brainy, upbeat kid whom the parents of other kids wanted their kids to hang around with. He thought he had a handle on his life. He thought his life would follow an upward trajectory in every way even though his family didn't have much money. It stood out in a community with a per capita income in the top 2 in the U.S. It seemed that everyone else's parents drove Mercedes or BMW's if not even more expensive cars. One family he knew had a Rolls and a Bentley.

The small West home of mismatched sidings and paints was smaller than the guest house that some of the other families had. Other kids seemed to bring the newest gadgets available to school. Wally didn't have any of them, not an ipod, dvd player, phone or anything. But, in elementary school, nobody made too much of it and his friends didn't seem to care. He knew things weren't quite right in the meager West household. He was envious of his sister for getting all his mother's attention and wished his father were around more and not gone so much on sales trips. But, he was one of the top students in his class, an all star in little league, junior league football and on the swim team. Things were going his way.

Then it happened. He became Kid Flash. He could still remember the burst of white light from the window next to the shelves of chemicals. He remembered the weird feeling of the lightning coursing through him, paralyzing him for a moment but somehow not quite being painful. How could that be? And he remembered the way all those chemicals that had shattered and spilled on him, drenching him from head to toe had almost seemed to soak into his skin. He tingled head to toe. All those acids and things in glass containers with skulls and crossbones splashed on him and shot through with a skyful of electricity and it didn't hurt. He didn't have burns or marks or discolored skin anywhere. How could that be? He remembered feeling drenched from head to toe, at first, of wiping orange hair dripping with chemicals out of his eyes but then, when Flash had come to his aid, his shirt and pants were half dry.

He remembered the complete feeling of wonder at what he could then do. Super speed. Cars, planes, even jets practically standing still compared to him sprinting along. He remembered the weird awe of seeing the world seeming to stop while he sprinted on. And he recalled the tremendous pride when he first pulled on his Kid Flash uniform.

At first, he thought it would only make his life better, that it was only this incredible bonus to a life already on a steady trajectory upward. And maybe it was, at first. At first, Flash was like a second father, or maybe Wally's first real one, teaching him all the things he had to do as a Flash, how to use his powers best and looking out for him. Here's the key to vibrating through a wall, Kid. If you vibrate your molecules, like this, as you reach the speed of sound, Kid, you can avoid a sonic boom. Running on water? You can do it easy, Wally. Here's how. Patrolling with Flash was fantastic! It took Wally hours afterward to calm down. He still wondered how he ever kept the secret to himself. How did everyone not guess? The teachers at school wanted to put him on as much ritalin as the law would allow. He was already a very energetic kid but now it was like his gasoline had been replaced with rocket fuel.

But somehow, things fell apart. Maybe it was only the naive view of an 11 year old that things were fine before that, Wally now realized. Maybe the cracks and gaps and problems were always going to spread and make his life crumble. Flash stopped patrolling with him so much. He had other things to do, Justice League, and being with Aunt Iris among them. He didn't know that he was the only semblance of a father that Wally had. And Wally had gotten really good at using his Flash powers. He could vibrate through walls with no trouble. He could run on water, create whirlwinds with his arms, and do just about everything else that Flash could do. Wally was proud to be able to patrol on his own and Flash was proud of Wally. But Wally missed being around Flash, especially after the excitement of his first few solo missions faded.

And now that he was patrolling and fighting crime on his own, it seemed to take more of his time and energy. He couldn't just pull on his uniform and follow Flash through a wall. He had to think things through and plan things for himself. He felt a greater sense of responsibility for protecting the people in the metro area around him. The more rescues he made, the more lives he saved, the more people there were whose images he would conjure up whenever he thought of doing something else instead of more patrolling. He would be in class now, ignoring a lecture or what a friend was saying to him and wondering where Captain Cold might have stashed those bearer bonds, what Gorilla Grodd wanted with the psychology institute's equipment or where those home invasion thugs might strike next, what was the pattern to their targets.

His pals had begun to feel an odd distance between them and Wally when he first became Kid Flash. He had a euphoria about something but would never explain it to any of them. And he quit all the sports he played. No more baseball. No more football. No more swimming. He seemed to be overflowing with energy and excitement but walked away from his only apparent outlets for using it, again, without anything close to a reasonable explanation to his pals. Then, it seemed like he was avoiding them or didn't have any interest in being with them.

He'd tell them he would be over Timmy's house with the rest of them to play Timmy's new video game and never show up. He would promise to meet Jeff and Aaron to work on their science project and the two of them would end up doing it themselves. He would be walking down the street or riding bikes with them, and out of the blue say "I gotta go", take off around a corner and be gone. He couldn't tell them that his ring, inside which he had his red and yellow Kid Flash uniform, had vibrated twice indicating a police call for help or three times meaning a call from the Flash. Even when he was there physically, they could say something to him and it was even money whether or not he'd respond. They asked him what was up, was something wrong, what was he thinking about? He never said. They still liked Wally but there was no Wally there anymore, not for them, and they had no idea where he'd gone.

He kept his grades up. If anything they were even better which was bizarre to his friends and other kids because it seemed to them that Wally never paid attention in class, just staring blankly ahead, his thoughts elsewhere. He went from being a teacher's favorite to a whipping boy even as he went from A's to A+'s. He'd never been a pet. He was too much of a wiseass to suck up and never tried to say the right thing. But now the teachers all disliked Wally to varying degrees. They hated that the kids all knew he wasn't paying any attention to their lectures and yet getting better grades than ever. It became an expected thing, something the other kids looked forward to, Wally seeming completely zoned out staring ahead into space, a teacher angrily calling on him and then Wally answering a question with ease. The kids got to laugh at both Wally and the teacher. It was great.

And sometimes Wally was lost in thought not about a supervillain or a crime syndicate or a daring daylight robbery but about his family. As he went into puberty, his mother, who'd always favored his little sister, now acted as though Wally was nearly invisible. The last Christmas, he'd gotten one present to her seven. He had to shovel snow, rake the yard, mow the grass, do the dishes, take out the trash and any other chore there was. She had none. That he could do them all at super speed didn't change the unfairness. His mother had no idea that he was Kid Flash. She got an allowance. He got none and had to make pocket money by doing things like mowing and raking neighbors' lawns. Worst was the simple lack of interest. Wally's last report card of two A's and four A+'s had garnered him five seconds of her attention. His sister's straight B's had been received with everything but a victory parade. When his father was away on sales trips, his mother would plan dinners for her and his sister and not even think of including Wally. He would come home and find that just enough food for two had been cooked. His mother would always say that there hadn't been enough for him , too. She repeatedly criticized him for his appetite, as if slender Wally could do anything about it. Sometimes they even went out without him. He didn't complain or shout or argue about it. It was simply the way it was. He just took the opportunity for Kid Flash to patrol more.

And then there were the arguments. Maybe they'd always argued, Wally decided. Maybe he'd just gone to bed too early to hear them before. They always seemed to occur around midnight. Or maybe the problem with the door made them more audible. The door to Wally's little room, a converted breezeway to a garage that had been torn down years ago, and about half the size of his sister's room, had somehow gotten out of alignment or something such that it didn't completely close. It would kind of stick in place but some sound came through. The arguments were so horrible, his father and mother saying such hurtful things to each other that Wally cried the first few times. He felt silly, a superhero crying, but it hurt him terribly. He wanted them to be a real family. People wouldn't say those horrible things in a real family. But, over time, he became inured to it. He only wished not to hear it. He would roll over onto his stomach and pull the pillow tight over his ears. How could he fight that? What could even a superhero do about that? What good was it to be a superhero if you couldn't do anything about that?

He got called in to see the school guidance counselors three times. Wally didn't particularly like them, so it didn't bother him at all the way it drove them nuts that he didn't tell them anything to explain the change in his personality. It didn't bother them that the teachers were wasting his time. He wouldn't let it bother him that he was wasting theirs. He was never going to tell them about being Kid Flash. Let them imagine whatever they wanted. They asked him questions that he knew were tentative attempts to determine if constantly somber Wally was doing some kind of drugs. Wally carefully gave them answers that didn't tell them anything but let them believe that if they wanted.

And then to complete the transformation to a new Wally, he started dressing completely differently. The genesis of it had been an idle remark to Flash at a birthday celebration for Wally's Aunt Iris, Flash's star reporter wife. Wally mentioned how proud he was of his physical condition and that even other kids were telling him that they were impressed with his muscle tone. Flash told Wally that that was no good. He had to do everything he reasonably could to hide what he now was. Aunt Iris had noticed Wally's worn out clothes and wanted to buy him some new clothes anyway. "Something to camouflage a budding orange haired apollo of a speedster a bit better" she said with a pat of his side. Wally blushed as red as the bottom half of his uniform. Aunt Iris was always saying nice things like that, as if trying to make up for everyone else.

The next Monday, Wally showed up in school wearing his new civilian uniform, hugely oversized pants that gave no hint of the speedster's butt somewhere within them, a plain shirt or t-shirt if it was warm, floppy large either way and a dark red knit hat with a yellow stripe. His orange hair was just too distinctive Flash and Aunt Iris told him. How many boys could there be with hair like Kid Flash and built like him? Better to hide it and not have people remember it. He wore his knit hat everywhere. It seemed sensible to Wally. But everyone at rich kid junior high took it as a sign that clean cut Wally was completely gone, replaced by rapper Wally or druggy Wally or some other disreputable version of Wally. The huge pants certainly discouraged any association of Wally with Kid Flash. He found himself constantly having to pull them up to avoid their dropping to his ankles and the shuffle they forced him into was anything but fast.

His mother and father hated Wally's new clothes. Thug clothes and lowlife clothes they had called them. They had always sort of liked to take credit for clean cut Wally. And they didn't like Aunt Iris butting into their family but Wally thought they had changes of heart when they realized that their skinny son with the 25 inch waist wouldn't outgrow extra long 34 inch waist jeans and work pants for years if ever. Money that would have been grudgingly spent on Wally could be spent somewhere else.

Money was an increasingly big issue in other ways. Wally remembered one of a library full of books he'd read was a sociology book that talked about the "calcifying of social strata in early teens on the the basis of affluence". It seemed so dry when it was a general discussion of the issue in a book. Being routinely mocked and looked down on for his family's relative poverty made the issue real for Wally. It didn't seem like such an issue when he was younger. But now kids seemed to always be cracking jokes about the dilapidated look of the West home, about his mother's rusting, 10 year old Chevy, the fact that he never went anywhere on vacations, didn't have his own phone, tv or video games and paid the special reduced rate for school lunches that only very poor kids paid. The party line was clear. You don't have money, West. You're a second class citizen.

The idea that he had the key to the good life and would help Jinx get there, was a bit ironic, even to Kid Flash. He sighed looking over at the cracked clock radio he'd gotten for a quarter at a flea market. 3 A.M. If she knew how this was driving me nuts that'd show her how I feel, he told himself then yawned and minutes later fell into exhausted sleep.

The next two weeks were so odd for Wally. He went to school like always, getting on and off the bus in front of the boarded up house two doors down like always. But when kids made fun of his clothes it really meant nothing to him. Wally had tried to treat it as nothing before but it still grated on him a little bit. He'd clench his jaw just a bit, narrow his blue eyes just a bit. He couldn't help it. Imagining how he might punch his tormentors in the face a hundred times in a second helped a bit.

But now, kids leaned over from the seat in front of him and smirked "That shirt some more of the Goodwill collection, carrot top? Ahahahaha!".

Wally tucked a stray orange lock back under his knit hat. Thanks for telling me. But he felt nothing from the taunts, nothing at all. Not a thing. He stared blankly ahead. Hmmmph. She's anesthetized me to any other strong feelings. He smiled in the face of their name calling. It was true. Another reason to like her. Even the incredible boredom of the last days of 8th grade were easier to deal with. He didn't get furious at the stupidity of it all the way he'd been increasingly getting. What a double edged sword that decision to read a whole library of books had been. He knew so much more that was useful in patrolling, in dealing with crooks and investigating cases. He knew so much more than he needed to know for 8th grade. How could he sit there and listen to a lecture about chemistry when he'd read chemistry books to have a greater base of knowledge as Kid Flash? It went from tedium to torture to sit through it.

But in the two weeks after meeting Jinx, he had a single focus for his thoughts. The boredom of the lectures didn't anger him now. However, he became even worse at hiding his disinterest, sitting there and thinking about Jinx in her short black dress and her blue and black nylons, replaying her every word and gesture in his mind. Twice in the two weeks he'd decided to wait before going back to her, he found himself suddenly looking up to see a teacher beside him almost shouting at him to get his attention.

"Earth to Wally West! Come in Wally!" Mrs. Corcoran had half shouted from a foot away as all the other kids laughed in pre-Calculus class. Wally just looked at her. Yeah? She pointed to the board.

"For the last time! Go to the board and do the problem there, Wally or I'm sending you to the principal's office. You don't get to ignore me just because you're getting an A"

Wally got up from his desk and hiked up his huge pants. They'd fallen halfway down his white boxer clad speedster butt. The kids in the class giggled. He shuffled to the board and didn't bother to show the intermediate steps of the solution. He just wrote "X 7, Y -32" on the board, tugged at his drooping pants again and made his way back to his desk past an unappeased Mrs. Corcoran.

"That's not funny Mr. West. Your attitude is not cutting it. You-"

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG.

The bell sounded ending that class period. Kids surged out. Wally picked up his books and tried to make his way out of the room but was stopped by Mrs. Corcoran as he passed her desk.

"Wally! Hold on a minute"

He stopped and hiked up his pants and faced her with a blank expression.

"Is-is there something wrong, Wally?"

"No ma'am"

"Are-are you on ritalin, Wally? The change in your energy level . . ! Maybe they need to reduce your dose. I-I remember a couple years ago, you were so jumpy they wanted to put you on a high dose of ritalin . . but I-I thought your parents wouldn't spend any money for it. Did they-"

"No ma'am. I'm not on ritalin"

"Is there . . " she glanced around the room to be sure that all the other kids were gone and put her hand on the side of his knit hat covered head in a gesture that was actually very sympathetic. "Is there anything wrong at home. I know some kids may have . . may have more than you but is there anything else going on at home?"

Wally just stared at her. You mean besides sometimes drunk salesman dad not being around much, and when he is, regularly scheduled screaming matches with my mother who has less than 1 as much interest in me as in sis?

"Everything's fine" said Wally.

Mrs. Corcoran sighed and let him go with a shake of her head. He thought that she would probably not bother trying to figure him out any more. His former friends had just about given up. They were pretty much all in the former category or getting there now. How many times say he would be somewhere and not show up? How many times could he blow off all the stuff that made up friendships and have them still be friendships? He didn't blame them.

Yeah, this superhero gig is nothing but gravy. Yessirreee. Must be awful sweet to live in Titans Tower and if you spend the afternoon fighting Dr. Light then go back to your pad and get to tell everyone "I was fighting Dr. Light". You don't have to insult your childhood friends by just stammering and staring back at them when they ask you where the hell you were.

And then there was Aaron. Wally's best friend going into junior high and then, slowly, step by step driven away like the others as Wally spent progressively less time around him, blew off commitments to be here or do that and started dressing in that giant pants and knit hat style that none of them did and going to raves. And then, just a few days before Wally, as Kid Flash, had met Jinx, Aaron had seen Wally with Speedy.

If only Speedy had zipped up in the alley! Ugh! What a stupid little thing to get wrong and to have screw things up! Kid Flash had given Speedy a piggyback ride a few hundred miles and had stopped in an alley, near a mall in the City. Of all the bad luck! Just as they were leaving the alley, kitty corner across the street from one of the mall entrances, there was Aaron with his mother and sister getting dropped off at the door by their father. Just as Aaron glanced in that direction, Wally and Roy emerged from the alley in civilian garb smiling at each other. It had been a terrific mission. They'd worked with the Teen Titans, well really only Cyborg, to help stop a Brotherhood of Evil scheme and had squashed it. They came out of the alley, had a celebratory hug and then Roy realized he hadn't zipped up when he'd gotten out of his uniform and zipped his fly. They crossed the street and Wally saw Aaron staring at him. Instantly he guessed what the look was. Oh my god. Aaron just saw . . he doesn't understand . . he-he thinks Speedy and I are . . gay. Wally wanted to convince himself otherwise but the disgust, the disappointment on Aaron's face, the way he turned away, as if embarrassed, at having seen Wally's shame. Wally knew what Aaron was thinking.

And, all of a sudden, he started hearing cracks to that effect. He wasn't sure what, if anything, Aaron had told anyone. Maybe they just ran out of jokes about how poor the Wests were. "If your sneakers don't have adidas stripes, they've got duct tape stripes, you just may be a West. Ahahahahahahahahaha!". "If your mom buys you 34 inch waist pants so that she won't have to buy you any new clothes till you're 40, you just may be a West. Ahahahahahahahaha!". "If both your car and your house are two different colors of paint, you just may be a West. Ahahahahahahaha!". "If, for you they're called Nike Frees because you swiped yours out of a Goodwill box, you just may be a West! Ahahahahahahahaha!" "Hey, White Trash, I mean, Wally . . Ahahahahaha!"

His sister didn't much hear cracks like that. It was all directed at him. Any spending money was directed to her. She wore much better clothes. She wanted dancing lessons? She got dancing lessons. All Mrs. West's attention went to Wally's sister. "I could probably come and go in my red and yellow, my Kid Flash uniform and mom wouldn't notice or even care" he thought to himself.

But, though he didn't change his ways, Wally sincerely regretted the loss of his friends. "Poor Aaron. Now he really thinks his friend is gone" thought Wally. "He sees me acting weird and disinterested at school for so long and then charged with delight and hugging Speedy. If only I could tell him. It didn't have anything to do with Speedy. It was the joy I get in being myself, the real me, the incredible new me that I can't ever show you, the Kid Flash me that can run thousands of miles an hour and do all sorts of super speed, Flash tricks"

And, in the last year, Kid Flash had come to take up more and more of the waking hours and Wally West fewer and fewer. At first, the whole superhero thing had been kind of a weekend or special occasion thing. But he spent more and more time in his red and yellow Kid Flash uniform and why not? He was getting better and better at patrolling, at being a superhero. He was getting better and better at stopping all kinds of crimes. The name "Kid Flash" and his picture were turning up in the papers more and more. They stopped referring to him as the "swizzle stick slender speedster" or the "bolting boy" or the "boy wonder speedster". Ugh. He hated that ripoff of Robin's tag. They gave him grudging respect now. Without him, how many of their readers would be dead or injured or impoverished?

The police, too, showed Kid Flash increasing respect. When he'd first started, as an 11 year old, it had been humiliating for some of them to have the job that they were paid to do done instead by a boy that size. They'd worked with Kid Flash more than three years now and their regard for him had grown more than the boy himself.

And there was the pure joy of the incredible physical feats he could accomplish. There was joy in being so perfectly conditioned. There was pure joy in being so fast that time was subjective. He could move so fast that it was almost as though he had one clock in him running at a completely different speed than the one that set the pace for the rest of the world, sprinting between cars on the interstate that might as well have been oil paintings for how much they moved compared to him. He ran home past lawns being watered, drops of water that had shot out from sprinklers hanging in mid air as though they could just as well be bubbles floating gently upward.

There was also joy in the purity of the missions and the patrols. While the West family was empty of love in ruins around him and school was nothing but pointless drudgery, the missions had a point. The missions reasserted that the world had a moral compass and made sense. What kept him from despair over his evaporating friendships were things like saving a woman and her baby from bank robbers who'd taken them hostage and the joy in her tearful eyes as she thanked him. All the rescues, all the lives saved and all the arrests of the various bad guys charged Wally's soul like the speed force had charged his body.

He was focused like a laser as Kid Flash where he was distracted as Wally. He was cocky and buoyant as Kid Flash where he seemed depressed as Wally West. Maybe he was so buoyant as Kid Flash as a reaction to being so depressed as Wally West. Not long before meeting Jinx, Wally said it aloud to himself. "Kid Flash is the real me, now. Wally West is like some filler identity or something". He would spend six hours in a completely subdued mood at school sometimes not saying a dozen words or taking a single step faster than a trudge, then get home and practically explode with energy upon pulling on his Kid Flash uniform and racing out to patrol an entire metropolitan city area.

His weakness was his lack of stamina and he sometimes wondered if he wasn't at least subconsciously being the quiet stoic at school to save energy for the part of his life that really mattered. Why give precious energy to Wally West when it could go to Kid Flash?

But the schizoid way his life was developing didn't satisfy him. Worst of all were those times when he saw Titans Tower from some of the hills around Jump City. He would stop, midpatrol and stare, oblivious to the gawking of people right next to him. That was what he wanted, to live amongst other heroes, to be able to be himself 24 hours a day and to be able to be social, to talk about the work he was doing, the work of saving lives and protecting people on which he was focusing his life. Finally, in the middle of the two weeks of waiting, Kid Flash acted on his wish and sprinted across the water to the Tower from Jump City.

He'd never been there before. His one mission working with Speedy and Cyborg had involved their meeting at a location Speedy told him about not far from the Xinothium storage structure that was the intended theft target. Wally was surprised how normal the entrance looked, all navy blue and silver like the Tower itself but very similar to a normal apartment building with an outer door and a buzzer. A glance at the door and glass walls as he pressed the buzzer, though, revealed that this glass was very thick and slightly odd in color, probably super strong.

"Hello? Hello? This is Kid Flash"

"I can see you" said the disembodied voice of Cyborg from speakers somewhere near the entrance.

"Um, may I please enter. I'd like to discuss something with you."

"Is it an emergency?"

"No. It's not."

"Well . . . um, okay. 11th floor lobby okay?"

"Sure!" Kid Flash chirped, pushing open the door and then speeding up the stairs fast as he could. He was there before Cyborg was. He thought his request might be laughed at or considered so weird that they didn't know how to deal with it. An application? But Cyborg just reached behind a desk and handed a form to him. Just the waiver to allow the Titans to screen you, Cyborg told him. Wally nodded solemnly. The first piece of information was his real name. "Everybody freaks about that", Cyborg told him. But he assured Wally that his name would go nowhere. It wouldn't even go into the main database. Wally signed the release and finished the rest of the form.

"Good luck, man. That job with you and Speedy was sweet. Nice and professional all around."

"Thanks. I liked working with you guys. I'll, uh, I'll work on the required resume.

He wrote up 32 drafts of a resume on yellow legal paper. With the help of one of the business books at the city library, he finally settled on a format for it and typed it out on a computer at school at super speed when no one was looking.

When he met Jinx, he hadn't had a date in months as Wally West. Even that had been a date not kept. He was on the way to the house of a girl in his class, maybe the smartest girl, attractive, too, in an understated way and not scared away by the new image Wally projected. He was was just a few blocks away, walking as Wally West, when his Kid Flash ring vibrated twice.

"Not now!" he shouted to an empty street. But again, there they were, two quick vibrations. It was the signal to Kid Flash from the police, over a super high frequency, that they need his help.

"Damn! he grunted and finished the word wearing his Kid Flash uniform. He stored his clothes back home at his bedroom and sprinted for police headquarters.

He apologized profusely to her the next day. But, though she was polite, she wouldn't give him a second chance.

"My friends and my mom said I was stupid to agree to a date with you, Wally. They all said you would do something like that or worse. It's all over school how Timmy and Jeff and Aaron are fed up with you. But I said you were really a nice boy underneath the odd clothes and everything"

"I tried to be there, Lauren. I tried. I swear."

"What happened?"

"I can't tell you"

"Oh. Well that explains it."

"Well, I'm not going to lie to you. But I-I just can't tell you about it. Can't you trust me?"

"No."

For a week, Wally would see her in the hallways or class and want to speak to her but she never so much as looked at him. She would walk past him to a clique of girls and Wally would see her speak to them then all the others look his way and laugh. What a maddening thing! There he was, his picture in the papers and on tv. "Kid Flash Saves Lost Boy" "Kid Flash Rescues Scout From Certain Death" and he couldn't take any credit for it even though he was Kid Flash. But he got all the blame for whatever he missed while being a hero.

Maybe having a girlfriend as Wally West would've delayed the transfer of his life into his being Kid Flash and away from Wally West. But the opportunity had passed and now his thoughts were of a girl who only knew him as Kid Flash. For two weeks, he restrained himself from going to meet her. As great as the lure of having half of his life be a full, working thing, he held back. He had a wet dream about her, one night, that was absolutely incredible. He would have sworn that she was really there in his arms.

But only the neighbor's cat, a little abyssinian named Empress, who sometimes came in through the open window and purred atop the warm body of the fastest boy alive, ever kept him company in his twin bed with its lumpy mattress and old quilt sleeping atop him on two other nights.

In some odd way, the girls at school seemed to sense the depth of his interest in a girl. They looked at him differently. He wasn't just the cute but poor orange haired boy with the blue eyes. It seemed to Wally that they talked to him in a subtlely different way, more seriously somehow as if they could sense, in some obscure way, that he, himself, was much more serious about a girl. Even Lauren cast a glance or two his way.

At last, the day he'd settled on arrived. When the bell rang ending school, Wally shuffled through the hallways at his usual clip, pulling up his drooping pants every few steps as necessary, nothing out of the ordinary. But his heart was racing.

Jinx!

Oh god, I'll see Jinx again! He felt like his life was about to move forward again. The moment he was out of sight, he stepped behind a hedge, pulled off his clothes and pulled on his skin tight Kid Flash uniform. He sprinted home and vibrated right through the wall into his room. His mom's car wasn't there. Oh yeah, he remembered. Sis's dance recital. With no one around he walked around the little house in his Kid Flash uniform, enjoying the feel of casually being Kid Flash in the West house. After a snack and some orange juice, straight from the carton just to annoy in absentia his mother, he took off on patrol.

When it was over, he started looking for her. Fast as he could, he sprinted through the areas around the HIVE Five's lair. No sign of her and he was able to eavesdrop on a conversation between Gizmo and Billy Numerous outside the lair. A few idle words seemed to indicate that she hadn't been around.

So, Kid Flash centered his search on other areas of the City. Where would I go if I were she? Hmmm. Kid Flash sprinted through one of the cheaper apartment districts. He came around a corner at top speed and saw, from behind, a tallish girl dressed in goth black but with pink hair.

Jinx!

He circled around to approach her from the front. She turned a corner and there, just a half block ahead, smiling at her, was Kid Flash.


	2. Jinx

Jinx smiled back at him. The timing was just right.

After they'd parted two weeks before, Jinx was sure she'd see the Fastest Boy Alive the next day. He couldn't wait. There's no way he can wait. She was certain. When he didn't show then, it just meant that two days after both met Madame Rouge would be the time. But it wasn't.

She was a bit perplexed. He was certainly interested. Hell, she'd whacked him over the head with a sign, put him in a cage and tried to give him to a member of the Brotherhood of Evil. And STILL he was all hormones and roses for her. Oh, he was interested. And he didn't seem like the patient type.

Jinx convinced herself that, at any moment, he would come rushing up to her, a red and yellow blur that would suddenly slow and focus into slender, athletic Kid Flash. She developed a bit of mild paranoia. He could be anywhere. He could come from any direction with no notice. She started to spin around, excited, at the slight wooshing sound of a building's air conditioning system turning on down the block or a distant car zipping by to one side of her. It became such a mania that she started to question what the sound of him approaching at super speed even was. Was it more of a woosh or was there some sound from his boots? The more she obsessed about the boy, the more possibilities she thought there might be. She worked it around in her mind that most any sound could mean his approach.

Because he was going to try and see her right away, wasn't he? The guy's whole game was speed, wasn't it? She felt sure of it with a mix of excitement and annoyance. Excitement because the boy was so cute. Were those the bluest eyes ever? And his cheekbones! That body! She recalled Mammoth laying him down in the cage at HIVE headquarters. His suit was so tight but it was still perfect because he didn't have a speck of fat on him. His buns in red! Oh god. She'd tried to look away quickly but just couldn't. Finally, Gizmo saw her looking at the caged hero and cast a suspicious glance her way.

Annoyance because he was a bit cocky, a bit arrogant. He'll come by any day now and think he can just smile and say a few cute words and I'll go good, won't he? He had just played with them. What arrogance that took! He put all the stuff back in the museum and didn't call the cops. He just sat there in the cage even though he could get out at any time. How did he know we didn't have some kind of a ray gun to paralyze him or wipe him out? How did he know? And if he knew he was taking a risk, why do it?

Then she thought of looking into those big blue eyes while he was in the cage. "You can do better". That face, that expression. She pinballed back to excitement. He was interested. He was soooooo interested and what does he say but "You can do better". What a line! What a choice of words, so serious from a boy who seemed like he might be the shallow sort. What an . . intriguing thing to say. How long had it been since somebody gave her credit?

She thought of it when she looked at the last rose he'd given her in a vase in the apartment where she was now staying. It was in the worst neighborhood of the city, prostitutes always on one corner, boy drug lookouts always on another corner. Course, the boys looked at the prostitutes and the prostitutes probably took drugs, too.

The apartment belonged to a girl who was a friend of her cousin, a girl whom Jinx had met at a party and got along well with. The girl had needed some money and Jinx had given her some. It was never about the money for Jinx. She was always free with it when she had it. The girl had offered thanks after thanks and said to look her up if she could ever do anything for Jinx.

The time came. Jinx needed someplace to stay right away. She wasn't going back to the HIVE's headquarters. To Jinx's surprise, the girl made good on her pledge. Not that it was a saintly action on her part. She was over at her boyfriend's place most of the time and it didn't hurt to have someone in the apartment, watching the place in a neighborhood like that.

It wasn't the worst place she'd ever stayed. Except for the high tech crib at HIVE headquarters, most every place she'd lived had left a lot to be desired starting with the first. She was born 15 years before, to a poor couple who lived in a double wide trailer.

On the way out of the house to the hospital, Jinx's mother knocked a mirror over, breaking it. Flustered by that, she made her way out to the car, walking under a ladder to get there and had her path crossed by a black mother cat and her litter of four black kittens. If those weren't enough bad omens, her baby, Jinx, was born in the 13th minute of the 13th hour of the day on Friday the 13th. A nurse checking records noticed that she was the 666th child delivered at that hospital since its opening.

But even these events didn't explain Jinx's peculiar ability. According to the aunt with whom Jinx went to live at age 8, who wheezed out her story between drags on the cigarettes that were finishing the killing of her that earlier cigarettes had begun, there was a vague story of a curse cast on the family right after the Civil War. According to Jinx's aunt, an ancestor of hers, an Elijah somethingorother had been a gambler and cardsharp on the Mississippi. At one time, he had an amazing run of luck and acquired a big house and a great fortune. He wooed and won a beautiful girl from a respectable family. But he couldn't be satisfied with a position in society. He couldn't stay away from gambling and chance. And his luck ran bad. He was desperate to change it by any means possible before he lost his home and position in society. A band of gypsies were camped in the area and Elijah went to see them. He spoke to an old woman in a wagon after too much alcohol. Along with the usual soothsaying, the sign on her wagon promised "luck transferrance". Drunken Elijah demanded that the old woman change his luck and make him as successful as he had been before. She supposedly told him from a look into her crystal ball that it couldn't be done. She couldn't give him the luck to restore his fortune. An enraged Elijah knocked the woman over as he started to leave. But she was a feeble old woman and just that was enough to kill her. With her dying breaths she spoke out a curse on Elijah and his heirs that they should not only not experience good fortune. They should experience all bad luck possible.

Elijah was ruined and died penniless. But the curse didn't seem to completely affect the family. Some descendants seemed to live happy lives of cozy, middle class tranquility with no particular misfortune. Some in the family had served in World Wars I and II and gotten home safely. Of course, there was that one son who was shot and killed on the last day, the very last day of fighting of World War I . . at Fort Dix. A stray bullet from a rifle range half a mile a way struck and killed him as he was getting into a train car. And there were rumors of a daughter of the family catching the misfortune curse before the turn of the last century.

"You got it . . . aintcha?"

Jinx shook her head.

"Don't . . lie . . to me! It's . . the only . . thing . . that . . 'splains it. I heard . . 'bout . . you"

Jinx sighed angrily, her pink eyes almost seeming to light up before her anger subsided. "Yeah, I got it"

Jinx didn't know all that her aunt may have heard about. She didn't have any recollection of her first years. She'd been an obviouslyprecocious child, she learned the alphabet before any of the other toddlers. She spoke before any of the others in the area. She learned to read earlier than any other child around. Everyone agreed that she was an adorable baby and child. Such bright red hair! So distinctive, almost . . pinkish. And everyone who met her remarked about her dazzling eyes that also seemed almost pink. She was in the pink in another way, too, in that she didn't even seem to suffer the normal childhood maladies, measles and mumps or if she did, she cruised right through 'em.

But something always went wrong around her. At first, it was sleeping. Jinx never seemed to sleep at the right times. Never. And never for very long. At unpredictable but always disastrous intervals, her piercing cries would nearly shake the double wide trailer till her father or mother rose to console her. After six months of exhaustion, her father got demoted at his job to third shift. Jinx started falling asleep at night, but only early in the evening. Her mother was a night owl and didn't sleep then, anyway. She was up and crying or making noise when her father and mother needed to sleep.

Her mother constantly wore a defeated look from never getting a significant stretch of uninterrupted sleep. And something always seemed to go wrong with the diapers, leaks, bad tape, bad elastic, always something. It seemed to her parents that Jinx just had to cry and the diaper would fail. Jinx's mother also found that, somehow, she could no longer breastfeed Jinx, adding to the family's expenses.

And then, there were the terrible twos and infinitely multiplied chances for mischief as Jinx learned to walk. Radios no longer played. A tv's picture tube went bad just after being brought home. Some of the things that happened, no one could explain even afterward. The day care home that burned down mystified the fire department. There was no reason for that fire to have started. No onereally believed the little boy who said that Jinx had made pink go into the curtains. Jinx said she hadn't done anything. There was just no reason.

Nor could the collapse of the jungle gym in the playground on top of two boys who'd been calling her names be attributed to Jinx. At least, it couldn't be proved.

By the time she was 5, her father had left. It was no specific thing. He just couldn't take it anymore, the haggard man told his equally worn down wife through tears. He'd just gotten fired from his job. He wanted to be a good husband and father but something was wrong and he couldn't take it anymore. He left their double wide full of busted appliances with regret but feeling that he had to.

But, by the time she entered first grade, the litany of mysterious misfortunes had been such that her given name had been discarded in favor of "Jinx". It was used affectionately, too. Her mother tried desperately to love her. She held her and hugged her and did all she could to look out for her beautiful little girl. But it wasn't easy.

The casual cruelty of kids was such that Jinx was almost relentlessly teased and taunted and called names by boys and girls for looking different and for being bad luck. Some of the kids called her a witch. When the movie of the Roald Dahl story "Witches" showed on tv with its descriptions of the characteristics of witches, including square toed shoes and purple eyes, there was a commotion the next day. As luck would have it, Jinx was wearing her cousin's square toed shoes to school that day. Her pink eyes were close enough to purple for them and a horde of kids called her names at recess that day. She didn't cry. She told them all that she'd put the magic potion into their school lunches and they'd all be turning into mice by evening. The crowd grew quiet. Eyes went left and right. Um, that's not possible, is it? Jinx burst out laughing at them.

Jinx was also an outcast because she was the smartest kid in class. She always got top grades and smiled serenelyat the lackluster efforts of the kids who had made fun of her.

The girls excluded her. In every way that belonging could be expressed, exclusion was expressed toward her. Jinx wasn't allowed to sit with certain girls at lunch or stand near them at recess. They didn't tell her their email addresses when they got computers. They wouldn't tell her their phone numbers. They ostracized any girls who did have any contact with her. If not for the fact that they'd ostracized many other girls there would have been no one to whom Jinx could talk.

But Marcy had been excluded from all the popular and near popular and, well, every other group, too. A stocky girl whose face always wore an ironic smile, she became friends with Jinx in second grade when she moved to the same town. Marcy read fantasy, horror and books filled with gore. She dressed in black at all times, loved horror movies, carried movie style fake blood squib packets with her at all times to leave fake puddles of blood on herself or in conspicuous public places and was an early conscientious objector from school society.

Marcy's arrival nearly coincided with the departure of Jinx's mother. There were no tearful goodbyes this time. Her mother dropped her off at her aunt's one afternoon after school. She thought her mother was coming to pick her up for dinner. At dinner time, Jinx's aunt informed her that she'd be staying with her for a while. The while turned out to be indefinite.

Her mother called regularly and quite frequently at first, but the exhausted sound in her voice faded the longer she was away and Jinx could tell that it was for the best. Finally, she told her mother that and her mother, with relief and tears thanked her and apologized. Jinx saved her tears till after she hung up, bawling and bawling into her pillow.

The emotional support of her friend Marcy helped her slowly get past it. But the simple fact was that the two people who loved her most couldn't stay because the misfortune she constantly brought on them was killing them. Jinx was unsettled for a while after that as if trying to figure out her place in the world and uncertain what it was now that the usual family template had proven impossible. Her attitude toward school changed, too. Wasn't school part of the whole expected good girl thing, along with family, that just didn't work for her?

Her aunt wasn't much help. Her emotions seemed to be reserved solely for 100's and menthols. But, she didn't get in Jinx's way much or try and supervise her much. All Jinx was to her was an extra mouth to feed out of a lingering feeling of obligation to her youngest sister.

The burdens on her aunt were lessened, too, because it was around this time that Jinx started to develop control of her hexing powers. She didn't immediately shoot off energy at the most minor emotional provocation anymore. And she could choose to project a hex, now. Jinx also took up drawing, picking up the interest from Marcy who had 3 thick pads worth of sketches already.

The day after her tearful call from her mother, she was walking home from school showing Marcy where show now lived when a group of social queen bee girls went by and made a few cutting remarks from the other side of the street. Marcy saw Jinx's pink eyes glow with light and then from her fingertips waves of light emanated forth. A passing truck's tire popped and went flat. The truck lurched to the curb going through a puddle and drenching those girls and their expensive outfits in brackish water.

Marcy was giddy, giggling "You did it! You did it!".

"I did . . didn't I?" smiled Jinx.

She had suspected, if not known, her influence in all the previous accidents and misfortunes that had happened around her. This was the positive proof that she had some sort of power. With the prodding of curious Marcy, Jinx tested and refined her powers. At both Marcy's house and hers, she tested how far she could hex things. She'd decided to call it a hex. And what things she could affect.

She found that she made things fall apart. With mechanical objects it was quit obvious. Radios or clocks would stop, for example. Plants would wilt or snap or sag. She'd even hexed the overaggressive dog from the house next to Marcy. It'd yelped and run away as if scalded.

Eventually, she learned of a science term called "entropy", the natural tendency for disorder to increase, for things to fall apart.

"I'm just an accelerator" Jinx smiled to herself with the book on her lap in bed, "an entropy accelerator". The smartest kid in class kind of liked the idea of her power being somehow scientific. She was a voracious reader and loved learning new things. But outwardly she reveled in the whole witch image. She took to to wearing black like Marcy, goth black lace and blue and black nylons. Yeah, I'm a witch. What about it?

But she didn't try to directly hex people. That was the final frontier of testing. But she hesitated to directly hex a human being. Marcy kept egging her on but she wouldn't. Jinx reminded her that this was her life and not some horror fantasy book.

"Do you want me to test on you?"

Marcy decided she could wait. But, eventually, at age 11, bookish outcast Jinx was in a situation where she was furious with a pair of jock boys. They'd been making all sorts of fat jokes about Marcy, calling her all sorts of names, making faces and gestures as they walked home behind her and Jinx. Jinx spun around on the two boys, pink eyes blazing and suddenly fired pink energy at them from her fingertips. Both boys were thrown back as if it by a car and left groaning on the sidewalk.

Word spread around school and kids seemed to keep their distance from Jinx and Marcy in the hallway. It was around this time that her reddish hair turned a pure pink, too. Everyone thought she'd dyed it that way as some sort of goth statement. But it was natural.

Jinx's life had reached a sort of turning point in junior high school when her aunt died. Jinx had grown disenchanted to the point of disgust with school. It was too slow. The teachers didn't care about helping her learn everything she could. The sign out front said "Helping Every Child Reach his Potential". What about my potential? She read tons of books on the side. Why did she have to read the crap that they made everyone else read? She'd gone through some of that years before. And the whole social system, the establishing of rigid status done with the implicit okay of the unimaginative teachers . She was sick of it.

Then, with nearly the same sentimentality which accompanied her being dropped at her aunt's, Jinx watched her family argue over who would take her. Who would have to take her. She arrived at her cousin's apartment in a run down apartment building on the edge of Jump city to icy stares.

"You didn't tell me she's some kind of wacko" her cousin's boyfriend whispered at the doorstep to her cousin.

But, it was the boyfriend who developed the most connection to her. He was a thief. And one day, after Marcy visited and left, the boyfriend closed the door behind her and turned to Jinx.

"Your friend says you can do some neat magic tricks"

"Maybe"

"How'd you like to show me?" he fairly purred.

An hour later she found herself in a car outside an ATM box unit at the edge of a large mall parking lot. It was the boyfriend's idea. If you can get machines to break, why not machines with money? The boyfriend approached the machine with a hat down over his eyes. He put in a card and punched in a pin number. When the machine started to whirr in the process of giving out money, Jinx hexed it. The whirring sound kept going . . and going . . and going. When the door of the compartment opened, the boyfriend could barely pull all the cash out. Still, the machine kept whirring and whirring, doling out cash till all the bills were gone and sparks started coming out of it. Hat still down over his face, the boyfriend gathered it all up then ran to the car with Jinx whooping as he ran. Inside the car he thrust the bills on her and told her to cash it while he roared out of the parking lot. It was 2440 dollars. Jinx saw only one problem.

"Um, won't they trace you from your card?"

"Little girl", he answered, "if you think that was my card you got a whole lot more innocence to get rid of"

ATM's became a sort of specialty of the boyfriend and Jinx. Every few days another one. They only moved on to other targets when they pulled up to one and her cousin's boyfriend was lucky enough to see the cops sitting in stakeout across the street. But they'd made thirty thousand dollars. While there were obvious drawbacks to the lifestyle, Jinx's experience being part of society in school were less than joyous. Her withdrawal from school began one morning when she simply felt like finishing the book she was reading more than going to school. Her cousin didn't mind and she was off waiting tables anyway. The boyfriend didn't mind. He was serenely accepting of the whole thing. He never much asked her how she did what she did, throwing hex energy from her fingertips. He accepted it and tried to figure how to make money from it.

Jinx considered it as well and quickly came to the conclusion that there was no positive way to make a life from her abilities. And she hated the way that school and conventional society looked down on anyone who was different. "What choice do I really have?" she wondered. "It's not like they'd make someone like me partner at the law firm or senator or something. Why not throw my lot in with the outlaws?"

She soon fell into a pattern of sleeping late, sketching from her dreams when she woke up and reading books in the afternoon, then going out and buying things from the pay of crime and a few times a week tagging along with the boyfriend to rob some place.

It was a life with a rhythm that suited Jinx. All her blossoming interests, her need to draw, her voracious reading, her need for a less structured approach to learning were fostered. Crime was clearly the life for her, she decided.

They worked up from atm's to a jewelry store. They tried a lesser one on the outskirts of the City. Jinx hexed the alarms at the doors and then the ones on the display cases. They got off with a folio fool of jewelry. The boyfriend said the take was 50 grand and that they'd get 16 from the fence.

Thing was, the boyfriend went out the next day to make the deal and never came back. At first this was tremendously unsettling. She wondered if she'd feel scared into going back to school. But she didn't. She was a bit scared, but while her cousin sort of mourned her missing boyfriend, Jinx found some of his notes on contacts, the people he'd contacted before trying to fence jewelry. She put some thought into it and planned a couple jobs of her own. It was a steady progression from there to becoming a more established criminal and, by chance, attracting the attention of powerful figures like Slade. And in this arena, unlike school, her worth was recognized and she was held in high esteem.

Her career from that point forward had not followed any particular design of hers. At times she felt caught up in events. Working for Slade hadn't been her intention. And the HIVE Five had seemed like a good idea but it became a chore. Five boys! Boys! Not like young men. Well, maybe See-More, kind of. But this wasn't what she really wanted, this junior chamber of commerce analog, this junior villain thing. She was torn by two conflicting impulses. The lesser one was out. Seeking the rare good luck amulet from the museum had been an expression of that.

The other was onward and upward. When Kid Flash humiliated them at the museum, her pride was hurt just as her curiosity was piqued by his gift of a rose. But he had thwarted out. So, when he showed up at their headquarters and for a time humiliated them again, while curious, she turned to onward and upward. Capture pretty boy and give him to the big leaguers at the Brotherhood of Evil.

His escape from HIVE headquarters only made her think again. But pretty boy had humiliated them and her in particular, what with her having told Madame Rouge that they'd captured him. Zapping him with the level four holding device was just what he deserved for making her look ridiculous. But turning him over to her, that bitch!

Jinx walked confidently up to him. "Thanks for the rose"


	3. First Date

_Author's Note: I want to thank the reviewers for their kind words. I'll try to merit such praise_.

"Thanks for the rose" she said

Kid Flash stayed where he was and let her walk the half block to him, taking in the sight of her as she approached.

To each, the other seemed like a slightly different person. He thought she was more beautiful than he remembered as she walked to him. To Jinx, the slender, super athletic boy in the red and yellow uniform with his hands clasped behind his back seemed more serious, perhaps even taller than she remembered. He was even smiling differently, just a faint curl of his lips, not a cocky grin.

"You're welcome" he said as she reached him. "It was just a a token of my appreciation for you giving me my freedom. I'm sure I value it more highly than you do a rose"

She locked eyes with him. Did he change so much in two weeks?

"I'm not so sure given how recklessly you act, risking your life to chase girls around" she said.

"Not girls" he corrected, looking her right in the eyes again. "A girl. I'm not so reckless. Come on." he said holding out one red gloved hand. "Let's find a place to get a bite to eat or a drink or something in the middle of the City"

"The middle of the City? Is that good for either of us?"

"It'll be fine tonight. You'll see"

"You've thought this through?"

He nodded. "If anything, excessively"

Jinx rolled her eyes in resignation but the truth was that she didn't need any pursuading.

"I'm going to cut about 30 minutes travel time out for us now. But I've got to pick you up to do it. I won't go too fast. You'll-"

"Wait! How fast is not too fast?"

"Um, around 300 miles per hour, I guess"  
"Three hundred miles an hour! Carrying someone? And you've done this before?"

He nodded with a smile. "Trust me. You'll be fine."

She acquiesced with a sigh. He was so completely confident that he could do it. And it wasn't cocky boy confidence. He was so calm and secure about it. Who wouldn't trust him?

It surprised her how easily the slender boy the same height as her in her heels picked her up, holding her as if he was carrying his new wife across the threshold of their home. And a split second later they were zooming past warehouses, buildings and stores, also other cars, all of it going by too fast for her to pick it out individually, like an editing trick in a video or movie. She sort of perceived the general outlines of the warehouse district as they started then an area of little strip malls, then lots of cars and the highway, maybe a ramp, yes, he ran down a ramp, didn't he, then the high buildings of the City center and all of a sudden, he seemed to go from 300 miles per hour to a jog in just a couple loping strides and he was putting her down gently on her feet on a pleasantly lit city sidewalk approaching a series of cafes.

"Oh my god. That was amazing! But everything blurs. How do you do that safely? Can you really see individual things . . cars and-and people that we go past?"

He gave a small nod.

"How? There's not enough time. It's all kind of just neighborhoods and districts and lights stretching horizontally"

"It's a-a super speed thing. For me there's lots of time in there. It was just a couple seconds but for me it was as slow as if it was 5 or 10 minutes"

"So you carried me for 10 minutes?"

"Nope, just for a couple seconds. But you're light anyway" he smiled.

With the approach of a series of voices, she tugged his shoulder to follow her into a nearby doorway. "Um, you're not worried that you'll get mobbed by well wishers or people wanting an autograph or something, the same people who might want to call the cops on me?"

He smiled. "Nope"

"Because?"

"It's a two ball night"

Her eyes went back and forth. He was giving her nothing, no expression, nothing in his eyes, nothing. Did he just make some off color remark? What . . ?

He burst into laughter. "Two costume balls. There are two giant costume balls, costume parties, whatever, being held tonight near here"

"Two on the same night?"

"Two different spoiled rich girls each wanted to have one to show up the other and neither wanted to change the date they chose. It's like some status climber showdown or dueling princesses or something"

"How do you know about it? You know those girls? You're rich?"

Kid Flash gave a smile that she couldn't quite decipher. "Nah. Part of the obsessive crime fighting thing that's taken over my life is that I actually try and keep track of social things like that to which I would never be invited"

He could see her sifting his words.

"Come on. Let's get a bite to eat or just a coffee" he said taking her hand in his red gloved one and leading her out into the light. She resisted.

"Are you sure?"

He looked her in the eye and nodded. It was that look again, the one that anyone would trust, the one she hadn't realized was part of him. She gave him a questioning look about it and he surprised her by understanding. He smiled faintly and proudly at her.

She stepped out into the pleasant air and street lamp light and matched his quick, smooth pace. As they walked along, Kid Flash in his red and yellow uniform and orange hair and Jinx with her pink hair and eyes, goth black lace and platform heels attracted no more attention than anyone else.

They passed a hobbit and Lara Croft going into one cafe and an apparently out of shape and down on their luck middle aged Justice League going the other way, rubenesque Wonder Woman and balding, bespectacled Aquaman leading the way. Zorro, complete with sword, bumped into Kid Flash and excused himself before complimenting Kid Flash's costume. An Aeon Flux in a doorway, waiting for Hellboy to finish pissing in an alleyway, raised an eyebrow and said "Nice Jinx! Great KF, too!". They passed a Cyclops and a Wolverine arguing over something, perhaps a Jean Grey, they couldn't tell. The sidewalks on both sides of the street were awash in would be heroes, villains and movie characters.

Jinx laughed. "This is perfect! Course it's always good to have a boy with orange hair next to you to detract attention from pink hair."

Kid Flash smiled. "How 'bout this one?" he said nodding his head toward a mostly glass fronted coffee shop that seemed inviting for the warm light it projected and golden wood surfaces inside. Jinx nodded her assent. They stepped to the doorway just as two Green Lanterns in complete uniforms, one a Kyle Rayner, one a Hal Jordan did so at the same time. The two were arguing over who had the better costume with shrieks and exclamations. Kid Flash gestured for them to go first. They both thanked him with an intense head to toe scrutiny.

"We have a weakness for yellow, you know" one muttered

Kid Flash nodded. "It's all over town. But I'm with her" he said holding up Jinx's hand in his red gloved hand. They fell back into arguing.

Inside the door all four waited to be seated. The Green Lanterns asked for the small empty table in the main window. The waiter looked at them then looked at Kid Flash and Jinx. He led the Green Lanterns to a table in the middle of the floor. He seated Kid Flash and Jinx at the table visible to all passersby on the sidewalk.

"Um, do you have a wallet or anything under there somewhere?"

"Just a uh dance belt. But I've got some money" said Kid Flash taking off one glove and showing her where some folded bills were held tight beneath the wrist of his uniform.

They ordered sandwiches and a five prefix coffee for her, the caramel cocoa for him.

"You don't drink coffee?"

"Nah. Sugar's okay. I'm ten times more hyper with coffee"

"That would be interesting to see"

He smiled.

"I'm glad you said okay to this. You look wonderful"

She was surprised to find herself actually blushing. "And you look great"

Their reactions were interrupted by a couple going by on the sidewalk who did double takes then stopped and gave thumbs up to both Kid Flash and Jinx at the table for their costumes. The woman pressed against the glass. "Those are both great. Where'd you get them?"

"Costumes R Us!" said Kid Flash carefully mouthing the words and Jinx snickered as they walked off with another thumbs up.

"You set them up for disappointment"  
"I'm only playing. Just an itty bitty joke"

"I was surprised to not hear your jokes before this"

"I considered it. I really did. But I didn't want to be overbearing. I'm sure it would've come off wrong."

Their waiter came with their drinks and sandwiches. As they were just taking their first sips and bites, the short blond waiter for the next table approached with that table's check. He slowed and stared at Jinx then positively gawked at Kid Flash, mouth open and eyes wide, staring brazenly at the front of him then along his side then down his back before dropping off the check at the next table. He spun right around and stared at the side of Kid Flash's head from a foot away. Jinx smirked and nodded in the direction of the blond waiter. Kid Flash nodded. I know. He turned and looked the waiter right in the eye, trapping him in his dazzling blues. He leaned toward him, paused a couple seconds and raised his sandwich between them.

"Can I get some mustard? This looks a bit dry"

Jinx smiled at the familiar words as he stumbled off whispering furiously "It's him! It's Kid Flash!" to their waiter, who shook his head dismissively. "Oh, please"

A few minutes later, their waiter returned. "Is everything okay? Can I get you two anything else?"

"Another caramel cocoa, please, large this time"

"Another one of these for me" said Jinx holding up her cup.

As the waiter jotted it down on his pad, a couple walked past them to the exit, she a middle aged woman dressed as the cone bra version of Madonna her escort a paunchy Spiderman with his mask off.

"I love your costumes! They're absolutely perfect!" she offered patting both Kid Flash and Jinx on the shoulder.

"Nice job" he seconded. "Perfect choices for you kids"

Kid Flash noticed an odd, sour expression on their waiter's face as the couple exited.

"What?"

"Oh, you don't want to hear"

"Don't want to hear what?

"Constructive criticism"

"Shoot" said Kid Flash with a mischievous glance to Jinx.

"Wellllll. First off, your hair" he said to Kid Flash.

"My hair?"

"That shade of . . orange!" said the waiter and he chuckled. "I mean. Come on. I'm a . . a big fan of Kid Flash's. The costume place or the salon overdid it with that hair"

"But they told me this is the exact color of his hair" said Kid Flash as Jinx snickered.

"They lied. It's not nearly thaaaaat outrageous. Trust me. I've seen all the pictures in the paper and on TV. They probably just couldn't get rid of that color and you were looking for a sort of bright red so they saw their opportunity."

Kid Flash nodded. "I had my doubts"

"Mmm hmm. And the-the little wings off the side of your head" said the waiter shaking his head at Kid Flash and touching the one by Kid Flash's left ear.

"My-my wings are all wrong, too?"

"All wrong"

"But they told me-"

"They told you wrong. They're not as conspicuous as that. They look a bit . . kitschy the way they did 'em for you"

Jinx had a napkin over her mouth at this point.

"Kitschy?"

"Um, kind of flamboyant in a way that's not quite good taste"

"Hmmm. Anything else? Because I want to list it all to the costume place tomorrow when I ask for a refund"

"Oh. The gloves"

"The gloves?" said Kid Flash rotating both hands and looking at them. "I really thought the gloves were spot on"

The waiter let out a sniff. You silly boy.

"Too fem!"

"Fem?" repeated Kid Flash incredulously as Jinx burst out laughing.

"Sorry. But Kid Flash's gloves are shorter. I doooooon't think they go half way up his forearm like that and longer to one side. Too fem."

"Jeez. I-I feel like such a chump" said Kid Flash

"Oh, don't! Look it's not . . bad. I like the material" he said, touching Kid Flash's shoulder. "Nice matte finish to it and you have the right um physique to pretend to be Kid Flash, a little bit scrawny, of course, but not far off"

"A little bit scrawny?"

The waiter nodded and Jinx snorted a laugh.

"Jeez. I was gonna try and really hit the weights leading up to this but I didn't have the time"

"I mean . . he's a superhero. Duh"

Kid Flash nodded. "Well, thank you, um, Brian was it?"

The waiter nodded. "One last thing. Did I overhear that they gave you a dance belt to wear underneath that?"

"That's right. A loose dance belt they said. Feels pretty weird, like I should be in the bolshoi"

"Exactly! Not nearly butch enough. It keeps your line but it should've been compression shorts, support briefs or at worst a jock"

"Of course"

Jinx had her head on the table now, her back shaking with suppressed laughter and her fist tapping on the table top.

"Oh and just one thing about yours" said the waiter. Jinx sat up straight wiping at the corners of her eyes and breathing heavily for a few seconds before calming down.

"Mine?"

"Yeah. You're that villain girl Jinx, right?"

"Well, that's who I'm made up to be"

"You've got the hair all wrong. It's not so fifties June Cleaver as the way they did it for you"

Kid Flash covered his mouth with his hand. "I told you!"

Jinx shook her head very slowly, smiling and looking up to one side. "Thanks Brian. Caramel cocoa for him and another of these for me" she said holding up her cup.

They sipped their drinks and talked about which of the actual costumes they thought was best and then got up to go. Kid Flash saw their waiter, Brian, approaching.

"Hope my criticism didn't affect the tip" he chuckled nervously. Kid Flash shook his head. Don't worry. Brian relaxed at the sight of the bills on the table.

Kid Flash whispered in Jinx's ear and then they stopped at the door to the cafe.

"Oh, um, Brian?" Kid Flash called out.

Brian looked up from gathering their plates and cups and tip to see Kid Flash and Jinx step outside and then Kid Flash pick up Jinx and super speed away, one moment in front of the big glass window, the next a faint red and yellow blur disappearing to the right.

Crash!

Brian dropped their plates and cups on the floor attracting the attention of all the other diners who saw the waiter point out the window and sputter and stammer, no words coming out of his mouth.

Kid Flash stopped a few blocks away on a darkened side street and put her down.

"That was great" she said patting his shoulder.

"Okay" he said pointing one arm left and another right. "Which party? Fairfax or Crane?"

Jinx looked at the different lines of costumed attendees. The costumes of the ones going to the right seemed better. She pointed that way. He took her hand and started walking that way. They were soon hemmed in front, back and to one side by other costumed partygoers. Again, they were complimented on their costumes. The woman walking beside Kid Flash began to stare ever more intently.

She tugged his wrist. "Are you Kid Flash? You're really Kid Flash, aren't you?"

Kid Flash chuckled softly. "No, but it's good to see I didn't waste my money"

"You sure look like you can run really fast" she said then tried to enlist her husband, on her other side, in her cause. "Bob this boy really is that Kid Flash, isn't he?"

"Ma'am. Would I be walking along this sidewalk if I were Kid Flash? Wouldn't I run at super speed into the ball or something like that?"

"But you've got the pretty girl with you!"

"She's a villain, though" said a woman in front of them. "Kid Flash wouldn't be going out with um, what's your name?"

"Jinx" said Jinx

"Right. Jinx." continued the woman in front of them. "He's squeaky clean and she's . . well, I guess dirty would be the opposite"

"You see?" said Kid Flash

But the woman was unconvinced and just kept staring at him.

Eventually, the line of costumed party goers came to a halt at the wrought iron gates outside a huge, mansion. As they were waiting, "I Like the Way You Move" by Outkast boomed forth into the street outside the mansion property. Kid Flash couldn't help himself and began dancing in place. When he looked over, thinking that she might be about to laugh at him, he saw that she was doing likewise and both danced a little more exuberantly, taking up a few feet space around them as they did.

The song ended and another that Kid Flash didn't particularly like boomed forth. He stopped dancing and saw that she'd had the same reaction. They shared a smile and he had her hold his place in line and jogged ahead to see what was going on at the entrance. He appeared to wave to someone already inside, pointing and mouthing words. Meet you . . over there? Okay! He waved, jogged back and tugged on Jinx's hand.

"Come on Jinx. Cindy Crane'll meet us at the side entrance"

"Why'd we wait all this time in line then?"

"I didn't know it'd be this bad. Cindy didn't say there'd be so many people"

Jinx followed Kid Flash. They walked briskly away from the line and around a corner of the high stone and masonry wall that surrounded the property into an area of hedges twenty feet from the wall and hidden from view.

"What now? I thought you said you'd never be invited to a thing like this."

"I wasn't. I've never met any Cindy Crane. We weren't going to get in that way. They're being pretty strict about the guest list. I just wanted to see if they were marking the people who were in legitimately. Three black X's on the back of the left hand."

"So, how do we get in?"

"Um, another Flash trick" he said turning her so that her back was toward the high wall. "I'm going to make both of our molecules vibrate so that we pass right through that wall"

"You can make me go through it too?"

"Probably"

"What!"

"No, no" he laughed. "I'm kidding. I'm sure." he said as she slapped him. "Just be ready. I'm gonna start my molecules vibrating then I'm going to press my palm to your stomach right at the navel and transfer the vibration to you. Then I'll pick you up and carry you through"

She went over and tapped on the masonry.

"Um, that's a real wall"

"With real molecules that are almost all empty space. Come on"

"You'd better not hurt me!" she threatened.

"Never" he said, quite serious. "Now close your eyes"

A few seconds later, Jinx felt a slight tingle as his gloved hand pressed to her black lace covered stomach and seemingly with no intervening time span found found herself on the manicured lawn outside the mansion.

"It worked! Oh my god. It worked!" she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him.

They went inside and each took a flute of champagne from a passing tray and drifted through the crowd as top 40 music played before stopping at table near the entrance of some sort of study. Kid Flash found a marker in a drawer and put three X's on both their left hands just like the people at the gate were getting.

"So, you'd never be invited to this something like this?"

"Nah" he said not elaborating then taking a gulp of champagne. "You?"

She laughed. "Not a chance. So, um did you ever had champagne before?" she asked.

"Nope. You?"

"Yeah, the HIVE stole it from someone. But kind of ironic that you protect them and their money, isn't it, when you say they'd never invite you to their party?"

"I try and protect everyone, including the rich"

"But you can see the irony, can't you?"

"Sure. There was a bank robbery last month where, um, have you ever seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?"

"Uh huh" she said taking a sip

"Do you remember the scene where they miscalculate how much explosive they need to open a safe and blow the top off a train car?"

Jinx giggled. "Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?"

Kid Flash chuckled. "That's what this was like. These crooks got through the security system clean but didn't really know how to get the safe open and tried lots of explosives. The air was just a cloud of hundred dollar bills and pieces of bonds and jewelry and safety deposit box stuff and explosive powders. I ran through and knocked out all the thieves and there I am standing in the middle of this bank with hundred dollar bills showering down on me and as I wait for the cops to arrive the thought in the back of my mind is anger that, as I left my house I saw that my mom hadn't put 75 cents on the counter for lunch money for me and that I needed that money in order to be able to eat at school that day"

"So . . what'd you do?"

"I saw the irony. I laughed" he said and gulped down the last of his champagne.

She gave him a long calculating look and a smile. Good answer.

"I don't want to leave you with the impression that being good is hard, just that it's not always a bed of roses"

"Roses again, huh?"

He just smiled.

"Anything else you want to say about being a hero instead of a villain?" she asked.

He tried to think of what to say. Nothing seemed right. It'll feel so forced. And then the music came back on, this time as a waltz.

"Some other time" he said taking her glass and putting both of theirs aside then offering his hand.

"May I have this dance?"

"I-I've never done a waltz"

"Neither have I" he said. "Let's see . . . Your hand . . here on my shoulder. My hand . . there on your waist" He took her other hand in his gloved hand. He looked her in her gorgeous pink eyes and smiled.

"You're sure you know how to do this?"

"I think I can. I read instructions somewhere. Just mimic my steps and follow my momentum" he said and with that they went waltzing around the dance floor. Three waltzes in a row played and they were the envy of all the dancers for all three. On the last, people stepped aside and watched the young couple spinning their way around the floor. At the end, he held her in his arms, both of them grinning ear to ear. At the same time, their expressions became quite serious. They kissed. When they finally separated, neither was ready to speak.

They wandered through the mansion aimlessly, both taken aback by the kiss and found themselves in the study again. They both leaned against a table, regaining their bearings. Finally he noticed the expensive collection of leather bound books on the wall shelves that ringed the room. He walked over to the bookcase. There, at eye level were a set of black leather bound works of George Eliot and a red leather bound set of Jane Austen.

"Check these out" he said over his shoulder. "These are beautiful" he said picking a black leather bound book from the shelf.

She looked at him with his back to her. A book lover, too! Yes, beautiful.

She came over beside him. The books were beautiful too, the most expensive bindings, paper and gilt edges, the sort of collection only the richest book lover could afford. She pulled a red leather bound copy of Pride and Prejudice from the shelves and opened it. It still had that new leather smell inside. She took a deep, satisfying breath and smiled.

"You're a voracious reader, aren't you?" he asked through a grin.

"I'm always reading new books. I go to bookstores and get books on rough guess that I might want to read them. I wish I could get through all the ones I have. You're a big reader?"

He nodded.

"I wouldn't have guessed, at first" she said then worried that he'd take offense.

"I understand. I-I know I project that image. See, I think we, people like you and me with special powers, get influenced by the nature of our powers more than we realize. My power . . when I'm using it . . I-I feel so great. When I'm running, when I'm being Kid Flash, it-it opens up possibilities. It's such an expression of energy. It practically forces me to be upbeat and hopeful. I don't mean to be a wiseass or showoff but it's hard for me not to be, with the way I feel. And on the other side of it, when I'm civilian me, I've fallen almost unconsciously into the habit of being subdued and somber when I'm not in my Kid Flash uniform using my super speed. Did I plan it that way? No. Not really. It just sort of developed naturally as the way to optimize my Kid Flash patrolling but I never consciously decided to sort of power down my life in normal clothes. It just gradually developed." he let out a helpless sigh with a grin. She got the message.

"So, there's a somber you?"

"The other me"

"Can I meet him?"

"We could do that next time. I'll be civilian me and you, well, is there another you?"

She shook her head. "Not really. I'll just go a little incognito"

"You're lucky" he chuckled. "This guy" he said holding his arms out to indicate his body, to indicate Kid Flash, "is hell on the other guy"

She shook her head smiling at him. "I didn't figure you for that much of a thinker."

"Like I say. When I'm using my power, it's-it's almost euphoric."

"My power's destructive. You know that. I wreck things. How do you think that makes me feel?"

He nodded solemnly. "But it's not you. It's how the power makes you feel. I'm not a braggart. It's the influence of our powers. I-I think I got lucky in another way. I didn't become . . this" he said holding his arms out as if gesturing to his whole body "till I was 11 years old. I didn't have to go through a whole childhood of having a power that I was unable to deal with on multiple levels"

"I think I was always the way I am"

"That must've been much much harder"

"You have no idea"

A silence fell over them. They stayed for a while longer mostly fending off people who suspected that they really were Jinx and Kid Flash and the advances of drunken partygoers who didn't. When they left, he asked her where she wanted to be dropped off and super sped her to a certain street corner.

"I'll take it from here" she said. "Thanks for a wonderful time"

He looked her in the eyes and they kissed again, the feel of her lips against his completing the buzz that the champagne had started for him. They stepped apart, both sighing and blinking.

"So, um . . how 'bout Monday at 7 at the Cineplex, incognito?" he asked, just able to focus on that one new thought.

"Monday at 7"

"You're sure you're okay to get back home from here? It's nothing for me to go the rest of the way wherever it is"

She nodded. "But thanks, anyway"

They both said goodnight and he took a deep breath. Then, as if shot out of a gun, he was gone, just the faintest wisp of a red and yellow blur going away from her down one street.


	4. After the first date

Faster! Faster! Faster!

With a rumble from a barely avoided sonic boom from almost starting to vibrate his molecules too late trailing him, Kid Flash scorched along the interstates as fast as he possibly could, without even paying attention to where he was going.

For once the euphoria of using his super speed matched the events of his life. He zoomed across whole landscapes, valleys, mountain ranges and plains coming and going in less than the blink of an eye, his to call up and dismiss with his incredible sprinting. He let himself feel all the joy that using his power created. No need to bear down to patrol as well as possible or to figure out some crime. Just sprint at super speed and feel the joy of it, the joy of feeling like he had almost conquered three dimensions, like he could go almost anywhere on earth at any moment because he was specially in tune with the elements.

It had been a while since he'd tried to set new standards for his super speed. Recent missions hadn't required it. And he was almost 15, growing every day, probably able to sprint faster every month. He poured it on, running as fast as he could, going from state to state losing track of which one he was in at any time, just luxuriating in the sensuous feel of his power and how the pleasure of it finally matched the events of his life. JinxJinxJinxJinxJinx! Beautiful Jinx! My girlfriend Jinx! My girlfriend Jinx! Images of her as he kissed her, her glistening lips, the beguiling look of fascination in her eyes as she looked at the expensive book collection and Jinx laughing in the cafe all ran through the speedster's head.

Finally, near total exhaustion, his velocity down to just a few hundred miles per hour, he ran off the highway, down a ramp, looking for an open area. Things could get bumpy when his tank went completely empty. He saw a big parking lot and headed for it, finally coming to a standstill in front of a Wal Mart.

"Yes!" he shouted. "Yes!" with his arms raised over his head then dropped limply to his side. He looked around, panting but still grinning. The lot was almost empty. Light traffic whooshed gently past on the roads in the distance.

"Wal Mart, huh?" he muttered. "Well then there've gotta be soda machines."

Sure enough, there were, by the entrance at the corner of the building farthest from him. Kid Flash started walking toward them. He couldn't manage any greater speed at the moment.

There were a couple last to leave employees getting in their cars. One saw a brightly dressed boy walking across the parking lot and drove over to make sure there was no problem. He slowed a parking space width away, idling forward at the same speed as a walking and still hard breathing Kid Flash was making his way across the lot.

"Um, you okay son?"

"I'm . . great sir" he answered.

The man nodded as he tried to figure out why some athletic looking kid would get himself in some bright, skin tight suit and be walking across the parking lot of the store he managed.

"Mind my asking, why're you dressed up like that?"

"I'm Kid Flash"

"Yeah, I recognize the outfit. I've seen pictures on the news. My son really likes him. He-"

"No sir. I really am Kid Flash"

Kid Flash could see the man reach into his shirt pocket for his phone.

"Please don't bother anybody with a phone call sir"

The man kept hold of his phone but didn't flip it open.

"I get tired and I have to take a minute or so to regain my strength. Give me a minute and I'll show you some super speed." he said and took a dollar from under the wrist of his uniform and fed it into the machine. The machine spit out a juice and he practically poured it down his throat with no break.

"Aaahhhh. Just, um, just where is this, anyway? I wasn't paying much attention after the first few hundred miles."

"Oh, really" the man deadpanned skeptically "why not?"

"My girlfriend. I-"

"So, this is cuz of girl trouble?"

"You've got it all wrong. There's no trouble. Everything went terrific. We-"

"So, everything went great with some girl so you got dressed up in that tight suit pretendin' to be-"

"Mister! I really am Kid Flash! I'll show you. Just tell me where this is"

"Outside Memphis."

"And which way is west?"

The man pointed out the window.

"Okay, you said your son is a fan?"

The man nodded.

"Well, take a picture of me with that phone, if you can" said Kid Flash, feeling vitality returning with each passing second.

The man raised an eyebrow but flipped open his phone and took Kid Flash's picture standing there beside his truck and then watched as the red and yellow clad boy burst away from him as if shot from a gun, just a faint trail of color to indicate where he'd gone.

"Ho . . ly Sh . ."

Kid Flash sped away from the shocked man back onto the interstates to home and then vibrating through the side of the West house into his room. He switched to his civilian clothes and made his way to the bathroom. He took one of his super speed showers, lather his body in a quarter second and just need ten more to rinse clean and then put his civilian clothes back on. No need to explain a shower that way.

He ran a wash cloth over his face again and started brushing his teeth at normal speed, dancing to "I Like the Way You Move" playing in his head as he did.

The song was almost done in his mind when he heard a burst of giggles from the bathroom doorway.

It was his sister. She'd just snuck in the front door.

"Oh my god" she laughed. "You! Dancing! You!". She doubled over laughing, barely able to stifle the sounds.  
"What got into you?"

"I'm just in a good mood" he said after spitting out some paste.

She eyed him skeptically. "Did you meet a girl?"

"What's it matter to you?" he said, annoyed that she'd guessed so easily.

"Oh my god! You did!"

Damn, he clenched his jaw. How did she guess so easily?

"What kind of weirdo girl would be seen with you?"

"Never mind about me" he said and had to suspend his toothbrushing as she took over the sink to wash her face and then to put some toothpaste on her brush. He finally stepped forward to spit as she backed away to start brushing.

"Why do you wear those ridiculous pants?" she laughed tugging at the back pocket while he splashed water to wipe toothpaste from around his mouth and seeming to pull them a foot back of him.

"Hey" he swatted her hand away. "They're . . they're right for me"

"If you put on about a hundred fifty pounds" she smirked and gave another tug at the seat of his pants. "I'm surprised Aunt Iris ever let you pick stuff like that"

"She let me get whatever I wanted" he said, completely lying as he dried his hands.

She moved to the sink. "I understand the hat anyway. Thank god I don't have orange hair!"

"I like my hair. Look at this stringy rat's nest you have" said Wally spinning his fingers through her hair. She slapped at his hand.

"Maybe you have better hair than I do but the color's just too freaky. And if you like your hair so much why do you always hide it?"

Wally had no answer for her. And as she finished washing, a funny recollection occurred to her.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she bounced in place. "At the party! At the party! They had a new name for you! You wanna hear?"

"No but you'll tell me anyway"

"These boys came in halfway through and they were all like, this is lame. So we were all like, no it's not. You're lame. So they were all like calling us names and we called them names back and when they like wanted to try to dis me, they said 'Oh, that's Gangsta Geek's sista'. Gangsta Geek! They called you Gangsta Geek" she said with a delighted giggle. "Gangsta Geek!"

"Yeah, I heard you the first time"

"It's perfect, with your huge ass pants and hat and and your attitude and your being such a nerd" She smiled at him hoping for an effect but it was the same as always, like a bullet bouncing off a tank.

"That really hurts" he deadpanned, "coming from a girl who thinks she should be able to use issues of Seventeen and Teen Vogue as the subjects of book reports"

"At least they're more interesting than Abstract Physic Security" she sneered then laughed at her ridiculous brother.

That was close to the real title of a book in his room on complex electronic security systems, The Abstract of Physical Security Systems. But she shouldn't have seen it. He blocked her escape from the bathroom.

"You were in my room, weren't you? How do you know about that book if you weren't in my room"

"I didn't go in your little geek ghetto. The door was open and I could see it on top of that stack of other ultra brainiac books, the-the, what was it" she giggled "The Forensic Ballistics Handbook!" she burst into laughter.

"You don't even make sense for a geek. The rest of 'em cram for tests while you're-you're . . I don't know what the hell you're doing. You know, you're so far out there you hurt my cred"

Wally smirked. "I'm so sorry. But I stay out of your room. You stay out of my room, Capiche?" he said.

"Wally! What are you doing up?" came the voice of his mother from behind him first at the top of the stairs than finishing at the bottom. Wally pushed his sister to one side of the doorway and out of view.

"I . . got in late mom" he said turning off the light in the bathroom and walking past her at the bottom of the stairs.

"I don't want you waking your sister. Who do you think you are coming in this late and making noise?"

Wally sighed. "Sorry mom"

"Don't let it happen again! It's bad enough you dress like a thug. I don't know why you are whatever it is you are but I'm not going to have you drag down your sister . . "

Wally's mouth dropped open. He sighed, nodded and shuffled off to his room, the converted breezeway off the kitchen. He stepped over the stacks of books and onto his bed, the tired old springs of the mattress creaking under his 123 pounds. He pulled off all his clothes, slipped under the covers and turned out the light. He was starting to doze off in just a minute when he heard his sister's voice from just outside his slightly ajar door in a sing-song taunt.

"Wally's got a secret girl-friend!"

"You brat!" he muttered.

"Wally's got a secret girl-friend!"

"Wally's got a secret girl-friend!"

"Wally's got a secret girl-friend!"

Wally shook his head with a smile dozing off with her words slowly running through his head. Wally secret girlfiend .. got . .secret . . . Wally . . . girlfriend . . . got . . . secret . . .

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTT!

"Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!"'

Wally woke with a surge of pain.

Zzzzzt! Zzzzzt!

Electric shocks seemed to tear at his internal organs.

"Aaaarrrrrggggghhh!"

His insides felt as though they were splitting apart from the pain. He could barely breathe. He tried to move, tried to run away, but couldn't. What the . . !

He had his Kid Flash uniform on and was somehow tied by the wrists and ankles to some kind of metal mesh in the middle of some half lit, semi-circular industrial sort of room. He started his molecules vibrating and tried to move through them but couldn't.

"What the . .!"

"Hehehe! I told ya! I told ya that's what he'd do!"

Holding his head up he saw Gizmo in front of him. But worse than that was that Gizmo was just one in a crowd of villains among whom were The Brain, Madame Rouge, Gorilla Grodd, Slade, Mammoth, See-More and a whole bunch of Billy Numerouses. Slade extended a prod forward and shocked him again. Kid Flash tensed every muscle in his body with the pain. He tried again to vibrate through the simple metallic looking bonds holding him in place but somehow couldn't.

"I told ya!" laughed Gizmo. "He's so predictable"

"Is no great achievement when it was actually girrel who prowided ze real information" snarled Madame Rouge.

"Girl?" said a frantic Kid Flash, suspecting what that meant and then seeing it confirmed as Jinx stepped forward.

"Did you really think I'd go good for some nice words and a few dances?"

"But Jinx . . "

"Oh, save it. You're such a sentimental sap. You make like you're Mr. Stoic Tough Guy but you're weak. Baby Flash is more like it. You babbled out all your secrets like nothing. How did we ever have trouble whipping your butt before?"

"But Jinx. Didn't you-"

Zzzzzzt Zzzzzt Slade shocked Kid Flash again. The pain was tremendous.

"I have no patience for this melodrama" he droned over Kid Flash's groans. "Let's try it"

"Try it. Try what!" Kid Flash blurted out and saw to his horror that some sort of silvery futuristic rifle was handed forth to Slade, who was standing off to one side of the group.

"Don't worry" he said in his usual dead monotone. "The purpose here isn't to blow you to pieces. On the contrary. We want you to live to see if the super speed eliminating capsule we're going to shoot into you works. If it does, you'll only be the first Flash to feel its sting and become just another guy, no faster than many of those in this room"

He brought the gun to his shoulder, as Kid Flash flinched, then fired.

"Yeeooww!" Kid Flash yelped as he felt the capsule go into the side of his hip. He desperately wanted to reach and pull it out, whatever it was, but couldn't move in his restraints. What was at first just a sting at that one spot on his hip spread all over his rear end and then all over his body.

"My-muscles are on fire" gasped Kid Flash. The fire seemed to continue and then he felt weak, exhausted even before slowly feeling his body cool and return to a painful approximation of normal. To his surprise, the bonds holding him retracted back into the metal mesh against which he'd been pressed. He fell to the floor but quickly gathered himself, with a fierce look over his shoulder at Slade.

He rushed him. But something was wrong. Slade was easily quick enough to block his flying kick and knock Kid Flash to the floor. He had executed it no faster than any other athletic boy his size might have.

"My super speed . . it's . . !"

"Gone" declared Slade.

Kid Flash got to his feet and ran for the door at the back of the room. A platform heel clad foot stabbed out from the crowd of snickering villain onlookers as the 8th grade boy was running past, at a speed not much different from other 8th grade boys. He was tripped and went cartwheeling forward onto his face. He looked back from the floor and saw a triumphant Jinx stepping forward. She was poised to bash him over the head with a "Caution, Wet Floor" sign but her swing was stopped by Slade.

"Let him go my dear." said the vile monotone. "He's nothing now. The best punishment for him is to let him go. He doesn't have you. He doesn't have a real family. He doesn't have friends. He's not special in any way. Let him go back to his life of isolated, grinding poverty. Ha ha. Ahahaha. Ahahahahahahaha!"

The villains all joined in laughing at him.

"Noooooo!" Wally shouted sitting bolt upright in the bed of his darkened little room and panting.

Rrrroww! Empress the neighbor's abyssinian knocked aside from his chest jumped for the window and then out of the house.

"Sorry, Empress. I . " Wally apologized but the cat was gone.

Wally jumped out of bed. He was bathed in sweat from head to toe. Slowly, hesitantly, feeling ridiculous but not certain he felt on the side of his buttock for any kind of mark. Nothing. Nothing but smooth skin. He sighed in relief. Hmmm.

"I-I should shower again" he muttered to himself, wanting an excuse to use super speed as much as to wash. He was in the shower. A millisecond, perhaps as little as a microsecond was all it took between the thought and his having arrived there.

"Just a dream. Just a bad bad dream" sighed Wally and he turned on the spray and lathered up in a quarter second. Ten seconds later he was out, dried and back in bed. She wouldn't do that to me.

Elsewhere, Jinx had gone home in a buoyant mood. The "escort" girls on their usual corner immediately saw something different in her walk and her look.

"You go girl!" cheered one with a fist pump as Jinx marched past. "You musta found a good one"

"No frog warts on this one, huh?" smiled another.

Jinx grinned to herself. Not this one.

She barely controlled her urge to run the rest of the way to her cousin's friend's apartment. She saved it for the last flight of stairs up to the third floor apartment. Her cousin's friend was out. She had a boyfriend somewhere in the city. He hadn't sounded like anything special from her descriptions. He wasn't like . . . Jinx didn't say his name to herself. She formed the picture of him at the table in the cafe and then waltzing in that mansion. He wasn't a ridiculous clown like that Beast Boy. Or overbearing like Robin. She'd worried that he would be an airhead behind that initial facade of charm and understanding or a controller. But . .

She sighed and shook her head with her arms wrapped tight about herself. Kid Flash.

She set up the futon for bed and turned out the lights wondering for a moment if she'd somehow missed something. Storybook never happened to me before. Was this what storybook was like? Was it too storybook? She fell asleep with a sigh.

She was outside the Crane mansion with Kid Flash. They each had their last sip from a flute of champagne. She gazed into his big, dazzling blue eyes.

"This couldn't be more perfect" she whispered. "It's like a storybook"

He nodded in agreement.

"Rrrrriiiiibbbbbiiiiiittttt!"

The spell of enchantment was broken.

"Wh-what did you say?"

"Kid Flash, fastest bullfrog alive" he proudly declared.

"What!"

"You heard me"

"I-I . . "

An uncommonly large fly had been buzzing around them. In a flash, his tongue snapped out of his mouth, over her shoulder a foot past her and snagged the fly in midair.

"Yuck!" she was repulsed and looked on in shock as first his peaches and cream skin turned a little green, then half green then dark green with a tinge of brown. As this transformation took place, his orange hair fell out and the shape of his face changed. His eyes became even larger and seemed to move to the top of his head while his nose practically disappeared as did his ears. His mouth got wider and wider. Then, his posture changed. He went from standing ramrod straight the way Kid Flash did, to slightly stooped then crouching, then poised to jump from all fours. Then he did jump, right out of his Kid Flash uniform to a spot at her feet.

Jinx looked down in horror at the super cute boy now turned into a 123 pound bullfrog. She stared and stared.

Him too!

As she watched, he took the giant fly, big as a robin, from his long elastic tongue and secured it under a slimy, webbed green foot. He stared back at her. There still seemed to be human understanding in him, it seemed to her. Finally, he spoke to break the silence.

"Could I get some mustard? This looks a little dry"

"What!" she demanded furiously.

"My fly. It looks a little-"

She sent out bolts of hex energy swatting him back into a lillypad covered pond. He splashed in and then came up, just the top half of his bullfrog face showing above the water. Two big blue eyes looked at her. One eye winked at her.

"Ew! No. You're a frog"

"Oh come on" said the giant Kid Flash bullfrog. "You sure wanted me on two legs. Am I so different? Or are you leg-ist!"

"Yes! I mean to the next to last one. I mean to all of them! I mean, of course it matters how many legs you walk on!"

But the aggressive Kid Flash bullfrog wouldn't take no for an answer. It leaped out from the pond all the way to her, grabbing her in its slimy green embrace. It pressed its huge bullfrog mouth to hers and then she felt its tongue, the same tongue used to snare flies in midair-"

"AAAAAHHHHHHH!" Jinx woke with a scream. The power in the building went out long enough for every alarm clock to reset to 12:00 and be hours behind.

She regained her bearings and lay back down to sleep with just a single thought before dozing off again. That's not him.


	5. Hazed and Irised

Author's note: I just wanted to suggest that fans of Kid Flash and the Titans take a look at a drawing of Wally West, Roy Harper and Dick Graysontitled "bah . . humbug" by an artist going by the name "farfie-kins" over at the Deviant Art, Titans page. Terrific

The next morning, despite the evening's nightmare about Jinx betraying him, Wally'shead was full of wisps of a subsequent dream about her. He couldn't recall details upon waking but the feeling it left him with was completely amorous. It seemed to take forever for his waking erection to subside with all his thoughts of Jinx. He barely had normal speed time to get dressed and make the school bus.

He wore his usual outfit to school, but it wasn't the usual Wally on the bus. He just didn't have it in him to compartmentalize his life and be somber Wally irrespective of how happy Kid Flash was. He smiled out from under his dark red knit. He laughed raucously at the jokes that other kids made and thought that it must be the most beautiful day that he had ever seen as he looked out the bus window at light just starting to hit verdant lawns,blooming forsythia bushes anda proud cat moving gracefuly pasta bed of roses. Gotta get her flowers next time, he reminded himself!

In school he shocked his teachers by paying rapt attention to every word, immediately answering the three times he was called on that day. He made a point to say hi to his friends or former friends. He still had affection for his pals. And his onetime pals returned his greetings with some surprise but a little affection, too. He walked around school with a spring in his step, at least one hand in his pockets to keep his pants up and blue eyes alive with feeling and perception.

Maybe it was the allure of the committed man but even Lauren looked at him differently. He gave her a friendly "hi" as he sat down at lunch at the far end of the table where she sat with her friends. At first she was annoyed. But as she listened to the other girls in her circle she couldn't resist casting a glance at Wally munching on his lunch down at the end of the table. The other girls kept talking, especially the one to her left but her head kept swiveling, her eyes circling ever so slyly back to the right where Wally sat.

She considered talking to him after school, but when he walked out of the building, he was immediately set upon by five juniors from the football team. Well, they were juniors for a few more days. But they considered themselves seniors. And to be fair, they considered the 8th grade boys to now be freshmen.

One grabbed each of a complaining Wally's limbs lifting the hundred twenty something pound 8th grader off the ground with ease. They marched over to the pickup truck owned by anotherof them parked in the middle of the school parking lot. They tossed him down against the open gate of the truck. Wally turned his head super fast to put himself in subjective time. Do I have to let this happen? He looked around. There was no way that Wally West could get free of them. It doesn't matter that Kid Flash can. Wally West was trapped. Damn!

Wally squirmed and struggled causing his pants to drop to his knees but they held him in place bent over but pressed tight against the gate, his white boxers showing to the gathering crowd of kids who'd been leaving school.

The truck had one of those bed liners with ribbed grooves. The two huge football players in the back of the truck each grabbed one of Wally's hands and put a foot on top of it so that Wally's long fingers were trapped each in its own groove with a huge sneakered foot on top of it. Wally was effectively locked into place.

"Come on, guys!" he pleaded as ever more kids gathered around to see Wally get whacked.

He spun his head around super fast again to see who was there. 77 kids. Some of his friends. In the background, by the doors, two teachers, Mrs. Corcoran of Pre-Calc and another. Nobody was trying to help him. He let himself slide back into normal time and heard the whistles and hoots of a carnival atmosphere.

"What'd I ever do to you guys?"

"Shut up ya skinny freshman freak" grunted an overstuffed lineman with a mullet.

WHACK! He swatted Wally's backside with a baseball bat style swing of the special oversized fraternity paddle producing a sound like a gunshot.

"Yeow!" Wally yelped in genuine pain as the watching crowd ooo'ed and ahhhed and laughed.

"Hey, I'm not a freshman yet!"

WHACK!WHACK!WHACK!

"Yeow!" Wally yelped again to giggles and laughter from the crowd. The paddle was taken by another junior much bigger than Wally.

WHACK!WHACK!WHACK!WHACK!

Wally groaned as the kids around laughed. This really hurt. His buns felt like they were on fire.

He had to endure a couple dozen more wallops of his rear end,as the watching crowd laughed, before they were finally done. His hands released from under the boots of the two on the back of the truck, Wally thought he'd be let go. That's what these hazings were, right, just getting your butt tenderized, right? But to his surprise, they yanked him up onto the back of the truck. The gate slammed shut behind him and the truck started to move. Wally had three huge juniors sitting on him and two others holding him down in the bed of the truck. They rolled a little bit away from the school parking lot and started tugging at him.

"Hey! Leave me alone you jerks!" Wally fought as much as Wally West would be expected to fight but in short order they pulled off all his clothes.

"Yeah, this is what I thought you guys really wanted" he grunted over his shoulder eliciting a couple smacks on the back of the head and an elbow slammed between his shoulder blades

Pinned on his stomach, he could see trees and signs and houses on hills over his shoulder. They were heading toward his house. He didn't understand. But then they paused a minute at the driveway to stuff all his clothes and sneakers into the mail box before accelerating away.

"See, nobody stole anything of yours"

Wally checked and made sure that he still had his special ring with is uniform. He did. But now, Wally really had no idea what was up. He struggled as much as he reasonably could to free himself but they were all much stronger than him. Eventually, after driving what seemed like ten minutes along a bumpy narrow road, they screeched to a halt with renewed laughter and shouts in his ear that he was worthless for being a freshman.

Wally sniffed. The air smelled terrible. What the hell was this? But before he could ponder it very long, two had has arms and two had his legs standing up in the back of the truck. Again, he couldn't free himself. One remarked in surprise about what good condition he was in. "Jeez, yeah, whooda guessed it" seconded by another. A third guffawed at the sight of the front of Wally. Another pointed and doubled over in laughter. Another frowned in disgust. "That ain't right." He shook his head in more disgust. Wally gritted his teeth in anger at being their entertainment, but not for long. A moment later they were swinging him back and forth and on the count of three throwing Wally over a high fence.

Splat! Squish!

Ugh. He landed, naked, in the mud and filth of a giant pig pen.

Ahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Ahahahahahahahahahahaha!

He slipped getting up, so that he was nearly covered, his pale skin and orange hair all gray brown with the horrible smelling mix. He saw the juniors falling all over themselves laughing and taking his picture with a phone. "Everybody in school'll have this in their email stack by the time you get home ya pathetic freshman freak!". Their laughter mixed with the snorts and squeals of the pigs, mixed quite well it seemed to Wally.

"You bastards!" he shouted at them. "I'll get you for this!"

They just laughed. And I will get you, vowed Wally. I've gotta take my lumps publicly but privately you'll all get yours with interest he averred to himself before moving on to thoughts of escape. The pig pen was gigantic. A hundred by eighty with a sort of many celled, roofed enclosure inside it that left one corner of the fencing not visible from the truck. All sorts of pigs and piglets and giant sows lounged about the edges and squealed running across the muck. Wally jogged through the filth to that corner, A giant sow sniffed at him and eyed curiously this creature twice her height but a third her weight. Another pig approached Wally aggressively, snorting and making as if ready to charge. Wally got a spot of good footing, and started his molecules vibrating then stepped right through the fence.

He ran super speed through the farm to trails through the woods and a pond. He dove in, the water was still cold in June, and swam the mud and filth off himself with a few super speed laps across the pond. He gave a dog shake to get the water off and sniffed. Still not quite right. He glanced at his ring but didn't want to get a smell into his uniform that would be hard to get out. He ran ahead on the trails to the edge of a yard with an in ground pool.

"Ah, chlorine" he said to himself. Just the thing. He ran around the house twice at super speed and determined that no one was home at that moment then dove into the pool, churning the water into a bubbly froth like a jacuzzi with super speed laps by the score before jumping out and drying himself with a towel hanging on a fence.

He got his Kid Flash uniform from his ring and sped back to his home fast enough to be nearly invisible and then adding a vibration of his molecules as he approached the neighborhood where he lived to make himself even less visible and to prevent any telltale sonic boom. There in the mailbox was all his stuff, pants, shirt, boxers, hat, socks and sneakers. He almost sprinted straight from there through the thin wall into his bedroom but caught a glimpse through the window of someone there.

Dammit! I just told her last night to stay out of my room! This is too much.

Kid Flash went around the obscured side of the house and changed there. He opened the front door and walked in wearing his civilian scarlet knit hat, oversized shirt and giant pants.

"It's me!" he called out from the door then made his way through the kitchen to his room. The door was ajar. He tried to calm to a reasonable level of anger as he pushed it open. She didn't throw me into a pig pen.

"I thought I told you to stay out of my room, sis" he snarled.

But as he opened the door he saw not his little sister but his 37 year old Aunt Iris, Flash's reporter wife who looked like a model just a little past her prime in a black pantsuit with a white blouse underneath seated on his bed, legs over the side flipping the pages of one of his thick books.

"You really go for this stuff, Kid?"

"Aunt Iris!"

"I mean, this is bone dry, Kid"

Wally grinned from ear to ear. Since he'd become Kid Flash, that's what Aunt Iris had called him, "Kid". It wasn't a coincidence. She knew what had happened to him at age 11 and what he was now. She'd washed his chemically and electrically charged clothes for him that evening or tried to. They'd nearly fallen apart in the washer. She'd had to give him some of her husband's comically too big things to wear home, her husband Barry Allen, The Flash. It also fit because Aunt Iris was the sort of fearless woman who just might talk like the lines had come out of an old movie.

"Gosh, it's great to see you Aunt Iris!"

"Don't dodge the question, Kid. I've had tougher than you try to slip through my traps in my 15 years in this business"

Wally just grinned. That's all he could do. Rather than joke with him some more, Aunt Iris got up and gave him a hug.

"Jeez, you've got shoulders now, Kid. Look at you!"

She stepped back a foot and put a hand atop his head running it in a level line over to hers. "Five eight?"

He nodded to go with his grin.

"Good for you Kid. Good for you" she said and couldn't resist another hug. He hugged back as she rubbed his back then gave his speedster's butt a slap through his giant pants.

He winced.

"That hurts, Kid?"

"Well . . it's like this, Aunt Iris. I'm nearly a freshman now. And I just got back from being jumped by a bunch of guys who're nearly seniors . . ."

She smirked then raised one eyebrow. "Isn't it kind of homoerotic, Kid, to want to paddle another boy's buns to initiate him into your group? What, exactly, is the group about then?"

Wally burst into laughter.

"Especially when they pick on such a handsome boy" she added rubbing his cheekbone. "So, seriously, Kid, you really go for this stuff?" she said flipping open the cover of The Abstract of Physical Security Systems.

"It's a Kid Flash thing, Aunt Iris"

"Kid. You're Kid Flash"

"I mean, it's something I'm doing because I'm Kid Flash"

"Trying to bone up on all the background information that might come into play in investigations?"

"Yeah"

She looked at the three stacks of books, roughly knee high next to his bed.

" . . Forensic Ballistics . . Industrial Metallurgy . . Advanced Polymer somethingorothers . . " she shook her head looking at her nephew. "You're only 14, Kid. You don't need to know everything"

"I'm almost 15, and I want to" he smiled.

"Well, just don't be upset if you don't get there, Kid." she smiled and then pulled off his hat in one motion.

"Hey!"

"Not so fast, after all if you don't see it coming, are ya, Kid?" she chuckled.

He only smiled.

"I just wanted to see that beautiful head of hair" she said mussing his wavy orange locks with one hand. "It's too bad it's so distinctive"

"Your hair's not any less pretty for not being a weird color, Aunt Iris"

She tilted her head to one side that he knew meant a joking reproach was coming. "Kid, you don't mention the words color and hair in the same breath to 37 year old women. You just don't. That's a minefield you want to stay out of'"

He nodded with a smile.

"So, I know it's a Friday, but how's about you and me take a ride into the City and I'll buy my favorite nephew a dinner and maybe some other stuff?"

"I'm you're only nephew, Aunt Iris"

"So, you rigged the game in your favor, huh Kid?" she said with a push to his shoulder. "Couldn't stand a little competition, could ya?"

Wally grinned and followed her out into the kitchen where he put on his hat then picked up paper and pen.  
"What're you doing?"

"Leaving a note"

She sighed theatrically. "Always the responsible one. How do you think I got in?"

"Well, you said you could pick just about any lock"

She slapped the side of his knit cap covered head. "I don't B and E family, Kid. Your sister was here when I got here. She was going off to her dance thing. Some big recital or something. Least, that's what the woman at the school said when I called last week to make sure my visit conflicted"

He laughed.

"Once again I don't get to dole out my attention so truly evenly like your mom" she said and snapped her fingers. Darn.

Wally grinned all the way out to her two seater sports car, Mercedes SLK 320 AMG. She got a kick out of the way Wally's eyes lit up at the sight of it and the way he gawked at it as he slowly circled it. She let him have a minute of rubbing his palms on the silver gray surface and looking intently up the hood and down the side of the car.

"Boys and cars" she sighed. "Could you be any more excited about a girl?" she asked and saw him flash a very quick but meaningful glance her way. She burst into guffaws and got into the driver's seat. She squeezed his shoulder when he buckled in next to her at the thought that her nephew had met a girl about whom he was really excited. In the course of pursuing stories, she'd interviewed them all, the full gamut from presidents and kings to killers and scoundrels, sometimes more than one category being covered at a time. You didn't get information out of a man if you tried to get it before he was ready. Having a poker player's sense of how to judge people had made "An Iris West exclusive" something that got the public's attention. She didn't traffic in "that Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer pap" , as she called it. She did real news where the people didn't always want to tell you a damn thing. The Kid would clam up if she pushed him now. But he'll tell later.

As the sports car roared away from the curb, Wally let out a sigh and glanced at her with admiration. It'd been months since she'd dropped by to visit him. It was always like this, just bang, hey Kid let's go for a ride. She never showed up with any notice. She said her job digging up stories didn't let her plan her schedule. But Wally wondered if she didn't do it that way on purpose. Without a schedule, any day might be the one when she'd show up.

Along with knowing that he was Kid Flash, she knew the ins and outs of the West household. And she wasn't afraid to say something about it. Wally was supposed to be asleep back in late January when she'd shown up and dropped him back home late at night. His first NBA game. But he could hear her talking to his mother. "What are you nuts? You give one of your kids one present for christmas and the other 7 or 8!"

Just to have someone say that it was nuts made it bearable to him, even if it didn't change things. Just to have it said meant he didn't have to. He wasn't sure what, if anything his other relatives felt for him but Aunt Iris loved him and he loved her back.

She sped along, zipping in and out of traffic, passing on roads that were marked with dashed center lines but on which Wally had never seen anyone else pass another car. Then when they got to the highway, she really stomped on it. He was silent for the start of the ride, just smiling and adjusting to his feeling of pleasure in her company. She broke the mood with a laugh.

"You are one unusual passenger, Kid"

"How's that?"

"One of my colleagues calls this car 'the truth serum-mobile' "

"Truth serum-mobile?"

"Yeah, because I like to take people I want to question in it for a spin and they tell me stuff they never intended to tell me because they see their lives passing before their eyes."

Wally chuckled as she quickly downshifted to slow the sportscar as they were about to run up the back of an SUV, leaving a patch of rubber as she braked and then jumped to the middle lane and then the right lane, followed by accelerating as fast as the 349 horsepower car could manage.

"But I'm probably not going to impress somebody with super speed, am I, Kid?"

"I can moonwalk faster than this, Aunt Iris" he said and she burst into guffaws as she powered past the other cars into the fast lane and turned them into specks in her rear view mirror.

They joked back and forth as she roared through traffic, expertly picking the right lane to make the best progress time after time. Finally, she skidded to a halt, perfectly positioned in a parking space on a side street just a block from the most upscale mall in the city. As they got out, Wally saw a couple unshaven guys in overcoats staring hungrily at the car from against a wall. Aunt Iris went right up to them.

"Either of you gentlemen know where the special gun sale advertised in the NRA flyers is being held?" she asked, affecting a Texas drawl, and then pointed to Wally. "We should have the paper with us. Unfortunately, m'nephew's a handsome one and the best shot in his class but cannot be counted on to remember instructions more complicated than draw a bead and fire"

The two stammered and looked at each other.

"Well allright thank ya anyway" said Aunt Iris with a tilt of her head and she walked away from them taking Wally with her. Once around the corner, she squeezed his arm and chuckled, "Oh, they might still steal it but I can't resist making them feel a little fear regarding the enterprise"

They made their way into the mall and, at first, walked around in no particular direction. Wally asked her a few questions about the stories she was working on but she knew how to shepherd a conversation and brought things back to him over and over. He resisted at first but saw that she was very clever at this particular game and quite determined. He gave up.

"How are you physically outside of a sore pair of buns?  
"I heal real fast, Aunt Iris. My butt's fine. And I feel great in general"

"Good. How's things . . well, let me put it this way. How's the stress level, Kid?"

"The stress level's pretty high, Aunt Iris. Mom and Dad and school. And I had another of those sort of catch 22 situations. I was on my way to a girl's house for a date and the damn ring buzzed twice. Police emergency. So I change to my red and yellow and go all over these hills looking for a lost scout. Nothing. I can't find anything after 2 hours. Me! Then I look in the opposite direction from where the police said to look and I find him in a few minutes. I wanted to hightail it out of there right then but they tell me the kid's family wants to see me and thank me. So I stick around and then it's too late to go over her house. The next day, the papers are all full of Kid Flash this and Kid Flash that but Wally West doesn't get any of that credit. I tried to talk to the girl and ask her to trust me that I had a good reason for not showing but she doesn't want to have anything to do with me anymore."

"Well, Kid, first of all, I don't think that's really a catch 22. You're just screwed is what you are" she said very casually and both she and Wally laughed.

And while he laughed, she watched closely, even as she laughed too. Nope. Whoever the girl he unintentionally stood up is, she's not the one. He's laughing too easily now for that look at the car. She's the girl before The Girl.

She asked her nephew what he wanted. He shrugged.

"Just because you're here with a family member doesn't mean you have to go into stoic-ascetic mode, Kid. It's okay to want something"

"I thought you weren't supposed to buy me anything but a basic. You had that big argument with my mom"

"You heard that?"

He nodded.

She sighed, taking stock of things. "Allright, Kid, I got you these indestructible but still soft pants last time" she said tugging at his pants and pulling them out half his own width beyond him "and the special but simple looking shirts and the hat" she said tapping his head. What's left? Socks and Underwear?"

Wally nodded with a smile. She shook her head. "Can you imagine if I gave your sister, princess, a blank check like that?"

They went to the pseudo outdoorsman stores. They went to the chichi clothing stores. In a shop called Extremes that catered to the rock climbing crowd, Aunt Iris bought Wally several pairs of socks that the salesman described as "comfortably indestructible". At one of the men's clothing stores, a tailor ran a tape around Wally's waist and then around his hips. He raised an eyebrow and took the hip measurement again. Just the thing! He came back with a dusty box of white, stretchy cotton boxer briefs. Wally protested that he only wore boxers. Try these. He did. "Really really nice" was his verdict. "They fit as if made for my body". She bought two dusty boxes for him. The price explained the dust.

"We couldn't make some underwear shaped right to fit you here in America, Kid? Kiton Athlete's Wear? What the hell kind of Italian name is that, Kiton?" mock complained Aunt Iris, happy to get him something expensive even if it was something as prosaic as underwear.

The shopping "spree" over, Aunt Iris took him to an expensive restaurant down the street. When they entered, she pulled his knit hat off his head revealing a thick head of wild, wavy orange hair. "Put your hands in your pockets and keep your pants up. No sneak peaks till we leave, okay" she chuckled and stood in front of him so that the maitre de couldn't even much see him. She got them a booth and ordered wine for them.

"You can drink wine safely, can't you, Kid?"

Wally nodded quickly.

"Ha! So you've tried"

He blushed. Caught.

"Two years ago at a friend's house. Some german wine. I didn't even know they made wines"

"Might've been a Riesling, Kid and they're pretty good but this wine will be a real treat for you. And your mom will never see it so it's okay for you to accept"

"You know, there's something else involved in not getting a whole bunch of new clothes, Aunt Iris"

"What's that, Kid?"

"I might be wearing my red and yellow all the time in the near future"

"How's that?"

"I applied to the Teen Titans for membership"

"You did!" She asked with delight and squeezed his bicep.

"Uh huh" he grinned.

"Heard anything back, Kid?

"Not yet, Aunt Iris. But it was only a few days ago"

"So, if they take you, you'd spend all your time in your red and yellow?"

"Well, most of it, I think. The important thing is I wouldn't have to spend most of the day pretending not to be what I am."

"That's what you want, Kid?"

He nodded. "Home is . . home is just a place where I change clothes" he said looking down somberly. "I-I wish it wasn't but you know the story"

"I do, Kid" she put her hand over his on the table.

"And things have worked around to where all the friends I had were pushed away. On top of that, school is just torture. It was boring before but since I started reading lots of books, it's sheer torture"

"You do that thing Uncle Barry does, Kid, where it looks to me like he's just fanning through the pages but he's reading a whole book in a second or so?"

Wally nodded. "Sometimes less than that. And the more I know, the more of a waste school is. I don't know what they do for classes at Titans Tower but it can't be any worse than now. I never intended to, but with hiding myself and being cut off from friends and saving my energy for when I''m wearing my red and yellow, I-I end up sitting there in this completely somber state all day long."

He imitated himself, leaning back against the leather booth seat and putting his arms forward onto the table while looking down to one side completely lost in solemn thought, his face expressionless, his school self.

"There's almost nothing in the lectures to bother having to think about so I sit there thinking about the Brotherhood of Evil or Mr. Element or a crime syndicate or something"

"And you can't talk about it with anyone"

"No, Aunt Iris. And it completely sucks. The thing that makes me what I am I can't share with anyone. What kind of life is that?"

She leaned over, hugged him about the shoulders and rubbed his orange haired head. "A lonely one, Kid" she said and watched him closely. She worried about his anger at the circumstance in which he was stuck but slowly, his eyes brightened and a faint smile curled his lips. She leaned back intrigued.

"But the girl I'm seeing now only knows me in my red and yellow"

"A new girl, huh, Kid? How'd you meet her?"

The conversation paused while food was served. Aunt Iris watched him hungrily shovel down his food at a pace that was at the brink of super speed.

"You know, they could torture dieting women by showing them footage of you eating and how thin you still are" she said.

He shrugged. What can I do?

She gave him a joking slap on the head. "You should slow the pace down at least a little bit, Kid. That was suspiciously fast"

He nodded. "Yes, ma'am"

"So, where'd you meet this girl, Kid?"

"On a mission"

"Uh huh"

"I . . " he considered how to explain it. "This is going to sound stupid. She's-she's kind of on the-the villain side of things"

"What!"

"I-I was covering in Jump City. I did super speed recon of a few areas and I saw this group called the HIVE Five which, of course, consisted of 6 members, preparing to rob this place. So, I watched 'em closely. And one of 'em didn't belong. She was better than to be mixed up with them. There was something about her, right away -"

"She was very pretty?"

"Well, yeah, but it wasn't just that. I listened in to her explaining what was in the museum to the others and there was intelligence and love of learning and more, just-just listening to her!"

"Keep going, Kid"

"Well, they were setting up to rob this museum. But I-I didn't want her to be put in jail. I-I couldn't. So when they took things I just took 'em from them and put 'em right back and when I had all of the group outside the place, I set off the alarm so that they'd run. Then I followed them back to their hideout, this pretty elaborate underground deal. I tangled with them a bit and was whipping the whole bunch of 'em and got to speak with her in the process. It seemed like I was making an impact in just a few words of talking with her."

"So, you beat them but separated her from them?"

He blushed deep red looking down to his sneakers. "Um, well, not exactly"

"What did happen?"

"They um, they caught me and put me in a cage"

"They caught you! Were you distracted by her?"

"Well, sort of. She hit me over the head and knocked me out and when I woke up I was in a cage"

Aunt Iris chuckled. "This girl hit you . ."

"And well wanted to give me to the Brotherhood of Evil"

"And wanted to . . Wally!"

"I knew it would sound stupid. But it really isn't. She didn't. In the end she kept me from being given to them. That was two weeks ago and last night I went to one of the costume balls with her"

"In your red and yellow?"

He chuckled. "Of course. I could go around in my uniform and not be out of place with all the other costumed people"

"Except yours fit. So, how was it, Kid?"

"It was great, Aunt Iris. The night was so perfect it amazes me. I'm going to see her again Monday night"

She first shook her head slowly then burst into extended laughter. "Oh, Kid. Here I was thinking you're this rigidly rational, scientific sort of boy reading your books and all and suppressing every emotion at home, all your anger and here you've gone and done the most romantic thing possible, putting yourself on the line for love of a girl. Oh my god" she laughed some more and rubbed his shoulder.

"I try to be as scientific about it as I can, but" his eyes went wide with excitement and he let out a big exhale. " . . Aunt Iris! When I'm running . . when I'm in my uniform and really sprinting, really pouring it on I . . " he sighed "I feel sometimes like I could sprint ahead to the horizon, like I could reach the horizon and get there before the next line of hills became the new horizon, and everything would be possible and I'd make my life what I want it to be. I feel so good using my super speed and kind of . . . I don't know . . . pure, like I'm tied in to everything more than other people and I'm fast not because of something extra but because I don't have something blocking . . something that everyone else has that separates them from being part of everything. I love being Kid Flash."

She reached over and hugged him.

"You are what you were meant to be, Kid. Just be careful about the girl, you promise."

"I promise"

She looked at him smiling and shook her head. "You liar. You're completely hooked. You couldn't be careful if you tried!"

He looked down and away from her suppressing a huge grin.


	6. Second Date

Jinx spent the weekend fairly quietly. She was invited to one party, on Saturday, courtesy of her temporary landlord, her cousin's friend. She showed despite her ambivalence and felt out of place. It was a music and drinks and smokes party in one of the hip neighborhoods of the city. It was the people across the hall from the boyfriend of the girl in whose apartment she was staying. Everybody had the right clothes and the right drinks and they played the right music. Cool as could be. But Jinx didn't feel particularly cool that evening. For one thing, everyone she ran into either smirked made a remark that was the equivalent of a smirk about her goth clothes. Soooooo last year!

She stayed off in one corner of the apartment with a drink in hand talking a bit to whoever came by but mostly just thinking. After a while, a blond guy came by and offered apologies for the "morticia" jokes his friends had made. He made a joke about each of his callous friends and sat next to her on the window sill. He talked about knowing a goth girl in school. He went on. It might have been genuine, but Jinx couldn't shake the suspicion that if she'd been the prissy type he'd have told about knowing a girl with a hundred stuffed animals. Girl jock type? Cue up the tape of knowing the school tennis champ. Musician type? I knew Clara the clarinetist. Zoroastrian vegetarian mime? Ya know, I used to know a girl who . . .

He was smooth. And with each successive ingratiation, he moved a little closer, touched her a little more openly, stared a little more brazenly at her.

Jinx let him go on mostly out of curiosity. When would his rap go off track? He kept talking and talking, joke, observation, mild compliment, smile. Lather rinse repeat. He got her another drink from a passerby and eventually worked his hand onto her thigh. It was now or never for sensitive player boy. He offered to take her to his place. Just the next building over he said then affected a bashful expression. She wasn't saying yes.

"Hey, you could do worse" he offered softly. He had no idea why that set her off, but it did. Her face completely changed in an instant and he was shocked to see her eyes glow pink like a demon's as she stared angrily at him.

"What!" she snarled. "Worse! Why not better!"

He jumped away from the window sill and nearly ran across the room and then into the next room to get away.

Jinx found her cousin's friend, told her that she was going back to the apartment and left.

She was glad she hadn't hexed him because the whole idea of her power had been at the center of her thoughts. How had he put it? We're influenced by our powers more than we realize. She chuckled and shook her head. Him! Insights from a boy like that! She shook her head at the unlikelihood. And I thought he might be a himbo with that face and body. The buns! God. She sighed. Who wouldn't expect a boy like that to be a bit of a dope? Surprising enough that he's a hero type without being an uptight jerk like that Robin. Titans Go . . . go screw yourself, she added.

But he wasn't that far from being one of them, was he, she asked herself as she walked the mile and a half to the disreputable neighborhood where she was staying. Or was he? Would Robin crash a party like that? Would Beast Boy get off on expensive books like he did? God! Expensive books and his motor races. Cyborg was another story.

She didn't have any bad feeling toward him. Somehow it just hadn't been the same as with Kid Flash, though. Dropping it all for him just hadn't been possible. But our powers influence us. Our powers influence us. And what'd he say? He said that he didn't get his power till he was 11 years old and that he realized how lucky he was for that.

God! If you knew! If you knew, pretty boy! She realized she was blinking almost non-stop as she made her way down the cracked sidewalks of her neighborhood thinking of the possibilities, but only saw how watery her eyes looked in her reflection in the door to enter the building. If I hadn't gotten my powers till age 11! She thought of it walking up the stairs. Maybe Mom would've . . and-and . . Dad.

She shut the door amid tears and tossed herself down on the futon shedding a squall of tears over regrets not fully considered for years. Afterward she sat up and wiped her eyes as another feeling grew.

". . not gonna be some after school special, movie of the week freaking melodrama!" she muttered angrily then finished wiping and jumped to her feet. The opposite of wallowing in self pity was action. She went for the first opportunity. Spying a tree swaying gently in the apartment courtyard outside a window, she flung the window open and fired two bolts of hex energy at it neatly shearing off two thick branches to fall 20 feet to the ground.

She was immediately whipsawed by two conflicting emotions, visceral pleasure at using her power and worry that the branches would kill someone below. She leaned out the window to see what the effect had been.

"Please! Don't let there be anyone . . "

There wasn't. The two leaf covered branches had fallen harmlessly to the grass beside the tree's trunk with a great rustle of leaves but no casualties. She let out a long exhale and resolved to hold off on any more hexes at least until after meeting him again Monday.

"How lucky is he?" she thought as she was going to sleep. "His deal makes him happy, so happy that he doesn't seem bright. Mine's there egging me on when I get pissed off. He is so lucky."

Wally West didn't feel lucky that weekend. As was the recent pattern whenever he was visited by Aunt Iris, his mother took her resentment out on him. All weekend long she yelled at him and hectored him for any available fault, real, imagined or completely contrived as his sister was a cheshire cat spectating on his difficulties. And all of a sudden, his mother had a mania for cleanliness and order that he simply had to immediately satisfy.

Dishes, Wally!

Trash, Wally!

Wash the windows, Wally!

Rake the yard, Wally!

Mow the lawn, Wally!

Water the grass, Wally!

Clean your room, Wally!

Do the laundry, Wally!

Vacuum the rugs, Wally!

Wash the car, Wally!

Clean the bathroom, Wally!

Anything she could think of, she ordered Wally to do. And she was buzzing around the whole weekend; he couldn't do any of it at super speed. He barely had time to mow a couple neighbors' lawns to get some money for Monday. Complain, complain, complain. That's all she did the whole weekend. Look at this! Clean this Wally! Look at that! Take care of that, Wally! Why do you eat so much! You can't possibly need to eat so much when you're that thin! And twice he saw her looking around in his room, going through the drawers of his battered dresser and looking under the bed, somehow suspicious that he must have been given something more than socks and underpants. Not a kind word, no thank you or word of any consideration for his efforts was uttered to spoil the resentment offensive.

Wally kept his head down and did what he had to do. It helped that, in the back of his mind, was the possibility that, fairly soon, he might become a Teen Titan. But more than that prospect, Monday's date with Jinx made temporary annoyances seem small. When kids in school came up to him that morning with paper copies of the juniors' pictures of him in the pig pen, a sow behind him and fencing in front of him, they expected a furious reaction or perhaps an emotional meltdown. Wally just shrugged.

"Yeah, they got me" he said with a slight smile, just happy that the mud made it hard to see his muscle tone and that his penis didn't show behind his left thigh. Kids made squeals and snorts and yelled pig calls but they may as well have been making fun of him in Farsi. It just didn't matter to him.

What mattered was what happened at 7 pm. He was there at the Cineplex at ten minutes of courtesy of super speed and a quick change of clothes in an alley back to his civilian uniform. With a mischievous smile he decided to see how long it would take her to pick him out of the crowd.

He saw her walking up to the entrance, one glistening drop of girl in the flood of people entering the doors of the 16 screen complex. She was dressed exactly the same as the last he'd seen her but with a bright scarf over her head so that her hair was disguised. He avoided looking directly at her from the bench off to the side of the doors where he sat. He saw her looking around intently, and could almost see her sifting through the possibilities. No . . . no . . . nope . . . nuh uh . . . no . . . Hmmm, slender and athletic . . nope, blond . . . no . . . nope . . . no . . . no. A head of reddish hair in the distance! . . no. Not him either.

A couple times he was sure she was about to look at him, so he looked away. He waited a few moments and saw her scanning the crowd again. Finally, after several minutes of increasingly frantic searching she approached him on the bench. He looked down at his feet.

"Excuse me. Have you seen a boy with bright red, actually orange hair around here? I'm supposed to meet him but-"

He looked her in the eye. Her expression changed and she slapped his shoulder. "You bastard!" she laughed. "Why didn't you come over? I saw you sitting here ten minutes ago."

"I was just curious how quickly you'd notice me dressed like this" he said standing up.

She chuckled. "You're so camouflaged dressed like that. Where'd you get those clothes?"

"This is what I always wear"

"Really?" She pictured him in his tight red and yellow suit and then looked at him in his body concealing oversized clothes and hat. What a shame.

"You said the magic word. Camouflage. I don't need kids seeing me and thinking Kid Flash"

"It's like the exact opposite of-" she looked around to make sure no one would hear, "-your Kid Flash uniform. That shows your body but hides your face. This shows your face but hides your body"

He nodded agreement and they went inside.

"You really went all out to hide, too" he smirked and she slapped his shoulder.

"What do you want to see?" he asked.

"Well, let's pick something we both like"

They looked at the board listing 16 different movies. There must be one we both like, they both thought. He began, willing to see a movie about which he was indifferent if she really wanted to see it.

"Um, Munich?" "Nah"

Her turn. "Glory Road?" she suggested. "Nah, a review said they cheated on all the facts. No thanks. How 'bout . . Rumor Has It?" he suggested trying to guess what might appeal more to a girl. "Ugh. Jennifer Aniston. And double ugh, Kevin Costner. How 'bout . . Syriana?" she said making the same guess of what might appeal to this sort of boy. "No way. I know a kid of arab background and I heard him saying that that movie says the CIA runs the whole middle east and that it's insulting to arabs. George Clooney? Intellectual of the new millenium?" He made a funny face.

She laughed. "Really. How 'bout . . The Producers?" "Jeez. I saw the old movie of it a week ago. How 'bout . . Family Stone?" "Will they play Everyday People or will Sly Stone have a cameo? I'm Sarah Jessica Parkered out anyway" She replied with an expression of mild distaste.

They quickly burned through the other choices in likeminded disinterest leaving only two options that both had left for last. "Um, . . . Fun with Dick and Jane?" he offered unenthusiastically. "I hate Jim Carrey with the fire of a thousand suns" she answered. "Trying harder doesn't make things funny".

"Pffew! I can't stand him either. I'd have sat through it if you really really wanted. And that leaves . . only . . . " he didn't even want to say it.

"Brokeback Mountain. Ugh. You don't really want to see two other guys do it, do you?". He shook his head slightly but emphatically. "Not that there's anything wrong with that".

They both looked around. What now?

"How about we go to the Borders in the mall around the corner?" he suggested and offered his hand. She nodded assent and they walked along the outside of the fortress-like Cineplex holding hands. It occurred to each, separately, that holding hands as they walked was a sign of being each other's official boyfriend and girlfriend. And each, separately, accepted that notion.

"So, what do people think of a boy dressed like that" she asked as they neared the book store entrance.

"I think they suspect that I'm some kind of criminal or lowlife or something. I don't think they're sure exactly what except that I'm something they don't like. You should've seen the teachers at school when I started dressing like this."

"What kind of kid are you at school? Are you a jock?"

He laughed. "I had to quit the sports I used to play but I wasn't really a jock then either"

"Nerd?"

"Um, I think that's part of the perception of me because I get really good grades and I like reading"

"But what nerd dresses like that?"

He kept the term 'Gangsta Geek' to himself and just shrugged.

They made their way inside the store and, with no particular plan, went to the literature section at the end of the alphabet to the far right from the entrance. They started walking slowly along those walls of the store, from the end of the alphabet back toward the A's. And here and there they stopped and talked about an author, each wondering, anxiously, what the other thought of this or that favorite of theirs.

"I remember how much you liked those books in that mansion the other night" she remarked. "That was a nice surprise."

"I remember you being pretty fond of them, too. What do you usually read?"

"Fiction, but not any one kind. Something'll catch my eye and I'll try that. I read a lot and I, uh, I can read whatever I want. I haven't gone to school in probably more than 2 years. How about you?"

"Mostly non-fiction. I read . . I read a lot of odd things to try and fill in the gaps in my knowledge that might help me patrolling"

"So, a lot of science stuff?"

He nodded and she smirked at him having to quickly pull up his pants as they were dropping past his rear. He'd done it a few times on the walk over from the Cineplex.

"Doesn't that drive you nuts?"

"Nah. I'm used to it. I barely even think of it now"

She pointed to the shelf as they were slowly walking past. "Tolstoy?"

He shook his head slightly embarrassed. "I haven't read any of him"

"Anna Karenina is great. War and Peace. Ugh. War and Peace is really hard to follow at the start. I gave up. All these characters! It was like he was trying to throw the readers off".

He sighed slightly at the beguiling twinkle in her eyes when she mentioned Anna Karenina. Book lovers take a small joy in the pleasure that other readers get from their favorites. Being so close to her when she recalled any joy pleased him. And to a reader, someone else being a book lover was like an affirmation of that person. She's okay. She's definitely okay. With effort he got himself back on track.

"Twain?" he asked pointing to a collection of his short stories. She shook her head. "There's a story called Letter to the Earth. It's close to the title of this other collection, Letters from the Earth but this is to, to the earth and it's just one story. But it's the most incredible, clever vicious satirical thing. More than a hundred years ago and it's as strong as anything today. It's great"

Now, she, in turn,lost her bearings. That boy, that face, so close and absolutely enthralled by a more than hundred year old book. She let out a small sigh to the side away from him and gave a tug to his oversize shirt. Walk. Walk. Don't just stand there gawking. Walk.

A little further, she pointed to Catcher in the Rye. "Salinger?"

"Nope. I refused to read it. That was me at my most obstinate in school. It-it just set me off the way they were talking about it that everyone just had to read it. I wouldn't."

She laughed. "So, you were a rebel about not reading the supposed young rebel book?"

"Yeah. The teachers don't like me very much. But it was a young rebel book being pushed by people against whom I feel compelled to rebel. Too much irony."

She decided to let that go for the moment as they walked on. "Ayn Rand?" she asked pointing to a copy of The Fountainhead. "You and Howard Roark have the same hair"

His expression brightened. "I read that one"

"And?" she asked with raised eyebrows. She loved it. Their first test of common literary ground.

"It's terrific."

"Hmmm. How do you reconcile liking Ayn Rand with being a guy who goes around saving other peoples' lives?"

"Well, I-I do get a lot of pleasure out of using my super speed and helping people. It's not just for them. And I've read some stuff on political philosophy. Not that much, but I have and I-I think I'd have to say that I'm a libertarian, which is what people who like her are, right?"

She nodded and smiled at him. This definitely piqued her interest. He likes Ayn Rand. Hmmm. They had a few more misses. He hadn't read Lolita by Nabokov. She hadn't read Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville.

"Huxley?" she asked pointing to a row of paperback of Brave New World.

"Oh god. I loved Brave New World. Great writing. So powerful and tremendously sad. My eyes were tearing up at the end"

"Really?" she smiled. "I love that book! John, the savage, is such a wonderful character, all honor and Shakespeare"

Without even thinking, he took her hand in his. He almost started reciting the 29th sonnet. He was thatclose. But he held off and they walked further along.

"George Eliot?" she offered pointing to two shelves of different books by that author. He nodded. "Very much. I read Silas Marner and Felix Holt and liked both."

She laughed to herself. He's not a bimbo. He's a book nut. "Do you know what a freak you are for being, how old are you?"

"Fifteen" he said, giving himself credit for the couple weeks he was short of that mark.

"Fifteen and having read stuff like that?"

He shrugged. "I don't think people should constantly check and measure themselves against normal and average. I wish I had thought of that phrasing first but I got it from someone else. Anyway, it's true. So what if someone's different in some way? Different doesn't mean sh-"

He stopped himself before finishing the word as an old woman was making her way past them in the aisle. They shared a mischievous glance.

"Back to George Eliot" she said. "Whom do you like better, George Eliot or Jane Austen?"

"Oooo. Whom. Proper english"

"Yes" she smiled. "I command the language. Now answer the question"

"George Eliot" he answered immediately.

She chuckled. "Guys always like George Eliot better than Jane Austen. Always. But some girls do, too, like me. Jane Austen's too girly girl."

"Really?"

"You do know that George Eliot was-"

"a woman" he nodded. "Mary Ann Evans, I think, right?" She nodded. They walked through the rest of the stacks without finding another common favorite. He recommended The Black Monk, A Boring Story and some other Chekhov stories to her. She told him that if he really liked Brave New World he'd feel the same for Don Quixote by Cervantes.

They stared at each other at the end of their walk, each re-calibrating their estimation of the other to a slightly different affection. After several moments, they walked on through the store, each making an occasional joke about a ridiculously unlikely to be sold book or CD at the front of a shelf. But mostly they just held hands and walked slowly on, each separately contemplating how unlikely but fortunate it was that the initial fire of interest for the other had so much more potential fuel. They were still mostly lost in this contemplation, strolling past trade and engineering books when something caught his eye and he stopped short.

"Oh my god! Cheng and Vandermeer's Contemporary Communications Circuitry!"

She laughed, "What?"and saw him staring wide eyed at the 12 inch high and extra wide black and yellow book then dropping to one knee in front of the shelf. There were books about plumbing and boilers and air conditioning and the section gradually segued into college engineering texts. The one that he was excited about was on the border between the two.

"Oh my god. I-I've been looking for that book"

"That excites you?"

He nodded feverishly but she saw his expression go to crestfallen when he saw the price.

"Fifty seven dollars? Fifty seven dollars! God damn!"

"How much have you got?"

"Twenty three"

"Put it on your card"

"I don't have any card. I have the money I make and that's it"

He sighed and looked around. She wondered. Is he going to steal that book? Good, boy goes bad for a book full of circuit diagrams and pictures of electronics. Set your price higher than that, for god's sake! But he didn't try to hide the book under his clothes. He lay it down on the carpet taking another look to either side of them and leaned forward, kneeling on one knee. The posture separated the back of his pants from him. She cast a glance there and saw the perfect skin of the small of his back and the top of his white boxers. But her scrutiny of him was quickly diverted by what he did next.

It seemed to her that he somehow managed to have all the pages of the book stand out in a semicircle above the covers and binding for two seconds and that he then closed it. But then he did it again and she thought she could sort of see him running his right index finger along the pages, all of the pages, every one of what must have been 700 of them. In two seconds. He slammed the book closed and put it on the shelf turning to her with a sly look and an exhale from significant effort.

"That-that wasn't reading, was it?"

"Yeah"

"No way"

"Mmm hmmm"

She yanked the book from the shelf. "Prove it" she said flipping it to the middle. "What's the picture on the bottom of page 341?"

He looked up to one side, deep in concentration. "Okay, give me a sec. That's chapter . . seven. It's . . it's two uh, two . . chips, one for TDMA and the other for GSM cell phone systems".

She slammed the book shut and gave him look of shock. " . .How did you do that?"

"It's um, it's a lot of memory association tricks and stuff. But it's really really hard and if I don't use what I read, it'll all just slip out"

"That's impressive"

"Thanks. It-it takes a lot out of me. It's almost like running at super speed for a while"

"Why that book? I mean . . " she took the book in her hand and read the title.

"Well, about a year ago, there was a case. I-I got to this crime scene, there was a poor dead guy and I walked through this industrial site with these two detectives and they were talking about all these things, wiring and alarms and metals and-and just everything they said was over my head. I was tagging along behind them like a puppy. I-I felt so pathetically ignorant. I-I was just a body, just a fast body that didn't know anything. They had to explain to me what they'd figured out about the case like I was a . . retarded kid or something. And they weren't being jerks. I deserved it. It was how they had to talk to me. I-I was just this fast body in my red and yellow. I think I'd been occasionally embarrassed before but that one case, especially, made me realize how ignorant I was."

So willing to beat up on himself, she thought. Not exactly a braggart after all. "But I thought you said you were near the top of your class"

"I am. I was then, too. But that's crappy junior high, the worst stand in there could be for the real world. Those detectives knew tons and tons of things about which I was ignorant. I-I decided that that would have to change. I started reading more and more books to try and get necessary background knowledge for working on cases"

They walked on chuckling at this or that unlikely specialized section of books and passed a section of shelves of books labeled "Gay and Lesbian". She looked from them to him with a smirk as if asking about his interest. He rolled his eyes.

"You're not a basher or anything?" she asked, just playing.

"No. Really, I'm not. In fact, I, well, with all the patrolling I've done I've become very familiar with where the police patrol and-"  
"Where do they patrol?"

"Well, I can tell you that they overpatrol in the rich neighborhoods on the north side of the city and that they underpatrol in the worst part of the city and that they underpatrol the-the gay district, the gay area near the theater district. I figured out all their patterns over time. So I patrol extra in those places. They deserve to be safe just as much as the people in the rich neighborhoods"

"You do!" she rested her head on his near shoulder and huggedhis othershoulder. His heart raced for a moment at the contact with her but she pulled back after a moment as she chuckled. "I can only imagine you in your skin tight uniform waiting in that neighborhood for the cops to arrive and a crowd gathering around you."

"Yeah, that's, um, that's happened a few times. Everybody asks how old I am and takes pictures of me with their phone and tries to figure out if I'm on their-their team. It's times like that that I wish I had a cape with my uniform. But, hey, that's part of the deal."

She sat down on a bench several steps away and he sat next to her.

"I'm so glad we didn't just go to a movie and sit there without talking. I think I had the wrong idea about you in a lot of ways"

"Same here. When I first saw you HIVE FIVE types setting up to rob that museum. I was going to just run in and punch out all of you. You're villains, right? Case closed. But I snuck in close to you as you were explaining something about the museum to the little mechanical wizard guy, um . ."

"Gizmo"

"Yeah, that's right, Gizmo. And the way you explained it betrayed how smart you are and how much you . . how much you loved learning things. You explained it to him in this wonderful way, trying to make him see how terrific it would be to learn all these things and to want to learn them. And I was shocked. Not, that you were so smart but because I realized I couldn't have you land in jail. I couldn't do it. It was the first time it ever happened to me that I felt that way. It wasn't till you guys were halfway done the robbery that I figured out that I should just put the things back and set off the alarm so that you went away and didn't get arrested."

"That's why you did that! You weren't just showing off"

He laughed. "No. I guess my rep for that precedes me but I was keeping you out of jail"

"Thank you"

"You're welcome. You don't belong there" he said turning to straddle the bench and face her. "You're very special" he added moving closer.

They were just a few inches apart now. The kiss that they shared was inevitable. It was also electric. They stared into each other's eyes, both smiling. He moved closer still and took her upper lip between his before turning his head for a french kiss. As their tongues mingled, he wrapped his arms around her feeling, in his embrace the gorgeous slender hourglass shape of her figure and then, with one hand, the dewy soft skin of her neck.

She was facing 90 degrees away from him and could only wrap one arm around him but acted with no reserve in its use, feeling the width of his shoulders down to the narrowness of his waist and then the muscularity of his hip before settling on pressing her hand to his warm chest just below the pectoral muscle. She could feel his heart beating fast. What pleasant continuity. And she felt one of his hands in the analogous position though deriving quite different sensation.

They kissed deeper and deeper and when they were gasping for breath, he drew his breath on the way to kissing the nape of her neck. She sighed heavily and reached under his hat to pull at his hair.

"Hey! Hey!" said a voice from outside and it took both of them a couple seconds to reorient themselves to their surroundings. A balding middle aged employee with glasses was looking at them angrily. "If you're gonna get hardcore, take it outside, kids"

Both grinned but neither said anything. Then Jinx swung one leg over the bench to sit facing him and they leaned in close and just gently rubbed the ends of their noses, both grinning at the pleasant sensation. The employee stammered. "That's uh . . better" he declared uncertainly and thought of an excuse to go somewhere else.

Jinx and Kid Flash rubbed noses some more and then he took her hand between both of his and brought it to his lips, kissing the back of it while still staring at her over it. Eventually she withdrew it and then brought it to his face to just touch one nail to his lips. She smirked. "You have such wonderful lips for a pale skinned boy" And then she thought of the irony and laughed. "Listen to me calling anyone else pale" said the light grey skinned girl. But he immediately came to her defense.

"You're beautiful" he said taking her hand again and kissing it as before. "Beautiful. And I am pale skinned. It goes with the orange hair. The most color I have is on my face" he chuckled "and that's not much either. I . . "

She looked at him anxiously. His face abruptly went from affection to worry in an instant. His ring had vibrated twice. There it was again, two more vibrations. And now a third time. Damn! God damn! Police call.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

He could barely keep from using an expletive as a prefix. "Police call . . . my ring. I-I'll either be back in ten seconds or this is goodnight" he said and quickly pressed his lips to hers. A second later he stepped around the corner of a high bookshelf and then he was gone. She vaguely remembered wanting to talk with him about powers and influences and timing of them but couldn't focus on those things. She thought of his face as she kissed him.

She sighed. He has to but did they have to call him now, now of all times? Aaarrrggghhh!

In ten seconds, he was back, in his civilian clothes. Only he didn't look relieved. He looked even more worked up. "Come with me right now" he said and walked her quickly to a spot next to the side wall of the building. They were out of view of anyone for the moment.

"What is it?"

"You remember at the ball, how I vibrated us both through a wall, I'm going to do that again, now. So-"

"Wait a minute! What is this?"

"There's no time, Jinx. Here goes" he said and, looking closely, she saw him seem to have the slightest blurriness to his features then step toward her and press the palm of his hand to her navel. A split second later they were outside, in the landscaping next to the building hidden by a high arbor vitae.

As she was preparing to demand to know what was going on, civilian Kid Flash was replaced, like an editing trick, by red and yellow uniformed Kid Flash and he took hold of her. Before she knew it, like another editing trick, half the city had passed before her eyes in less than a second, the half of the city from the Borders book store to the same intersection where he'd left her last time, only now they stood in an alleyway a half block from it as she tried to calm her wind whipped hair.

"Are you done with the Flash tricks? Tell me what the hell is going on, now!"

"The police call was for a sighting of you. I'm not sure what your legal status is but someone guessed that that was you at the book store and they called the frigging cops who buzzed me because you're not a typical guy with a warrant out on him. Just, um, please, go home. I'll try and figure out where things stand. Call me tomorrow at 555-4608 that's my home phone. My real name is Wally. Just ask for Wally if I don't answer."

"You did wrong for me . . Wally"

"I-I did what I had to do" he said then stepped forward and kissed her like a continuation of their kiss in the Borders store. When he finally stepped back from her he pulled a rose from his glove.

"Here. I was saving this for you all night under my shirt".

She took it in one hand and he took her other hand between his two, kissing it and staring at her over her hand. Then he was gone.


	7. After the second date

Kid Flash raced back to the Borders book store at top speed. As he approached, he saw an unmarked police cruiser in the process of turning into the parking lot. He sprinted to the back of the building and vibrated through the wall near where he'd gone through with Jinx a few moments earlier. He slowed to a stop inside the store and walked slowly through toward the door, making a good, conspicuous show of looking for Jinx. He went into a sprint and vibrated through the entrance doors before stopping beside the driver's side of the unmarked cruiser in a spot facing the entrance.

The driver rolled down the window. Kid Flash bent over.

"There's no Jinx in there" he reported.

"You're sure?" asked the plainclothes driver.

"Winston showed me her picture at the desk at headquarters. That girl is not in there"

"Jesus" snorted the guy passenger side. "That's a pretty hard thing to get wrong, isn't it, pink hair and eyes, I mean"

"Djou look in the women's bathroom?"asked the passenger side cop.

"Oh jeez, no" admitted Kid Flash. "Sort of a modesty, politeness thing with me"

"Brennan and Doyle will kill us if we don't check" said the driver. "MF'ing MH squad". So, the two cops got out and went into the Borders with Kid Flash. One went to the back of the store and knocked on the door to the women's bathroom before going in. No one. They looked around. No Jinx. After a few minutes they were all back near the entrance where Kid Flash noticed an older woman with a Borders bag eyeing him nervously from behind one of the displays.

"Don't most people leave after they've bought their books" he muttered to one of the cops nodding in her general direction.

"Let's see what she does if we flash badges" said the driver and, sure enough, once he and the other cop hung their badges on the waists of their jeans the woman ambled toward them, looking at the officers with relief but casting occasional nervous glances at Kid Flash.

"Oh, thank god. I didn't know if you were policemen or if you were with them" she said

"Them, ma'am?" asked the driver, the leader of the two.

"The villains and the mutants and the freaks" she said with a look at Kid Flash. "I don't know many of 'em but I knew her. I saw her on Hard Copy, the story about the Teen Titans. And she was in one of the pictures in The Star. Look!" she said and reached into her bag past what Kid Flash could see was a romance novel and a copy of the latest edition of Vanity Fair magazine to a copy of The Star. She flipped through the pages, exasperatingly thumbing at the last one before the intended page five times before turning it to reveal a picture of a fight between The HIVE and the Teen Titans.

"That's her. She was here. I'm sure of it. So, I called"

Kid Flash rolled his eyes at the other cop who had an expression of great forbearance and sighed.

"You're sure you saw this girl, ma'am?" said the first officer, pointing at the image on the page. She held up her right hand as if testifying.

"On a stack of bibles" she said. She had her hair in a scarf but you could see the edges of it and it was pink. Pink! I walked by her once and thought I saw her eyes. They're pink too, you know. She was talking to some hoodlum boy, probably planning something."

Kid Flash sighed.

"So, I went to the pay phone outside and called in that that villain girl Jinx was in the book store on this road and the-the dispatcher woman was asking 'are you sure' and I said that I was but I came back inside anyway. What if I was wrong? But there she was on the bench over" she said pointing to the bench on which Kid Flash in civilian clothes had been kissing Jinx. "She was with the hoodlum boy, practically putting on a sex show and at one point she-she was looking up at the ceiling smiling some . . sex smile-" the second officer and Kid Flash shared a quick glance "-and her eyes glowed pink. They glowed . . pink! It was her allright!"

"Well, ma'am, Kid Flash here and officer Colavito and I have searched the store but we don't think she's in here. Did she sneak out before we arrived?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm positive. I've been over here by the new non-fiction since I made the call. She never went out that door"

"Could she have gotten past you when you looked away, perhaps?"

The woman stammered indignantly before the second officer asked, "How about the boy, ma'am, the, uh, hoodlum boy. Is he still here? Could you describe him for us?"

She sighed. "Well, it's kind of hard. He was wearing those hoodlum clothes, you know, with the pants much bigger than his fanny and a hat indoors, and all, you know"

"Give it your best shot" he said pulling a pad of paper and pen from his pocket.

"Well, not to brag, but I do have a photographic memory-"

"Oh, good, ma'am"

"He was six feet tall and about a hundred eighty five pounds. Green eyes, blond hair. I saw just a lock or two under his hat, athletic and young, maybe a few years older than him" she said, pointing to Kid Flash. The officer wrote down her description. "Ah, eyewitness testimony" thought Kid Flash. From the theft detectors by the door, the two officers looked for a boy matching that description. Kid Flash made a show of it as well, zipping about the store before returning to the officers at the entrance. The first officer turned to the woman.

"Ma'am. Are you sure you didn't look down or away even once?"

"I didn't. I saw 'em go to the back of the store and, well, I looked down for a minute then, you see, I got this bunion and-"

"Well, that must be it ma'am. Hoodlums and villains are sneaky people they might have just been pretending to go one way only to head the other to escape"

"But how did they know?"

"That's their job, ma'am" said the second cop. "If they couldn't tell they were being watched we'd catch 'em all much quicker."

"Of course!"

The officer who'd taken down the description took down her name and telephone number and thanked her profusely as they all made their way out of the store. Kid Flash waved goodbye to her along with the officers and walked to their car with them.

"What jury wouldn't be impressed by a witness basing her positive identification on The Star, unless of course it's more of an Enquirer sort of jury." said Kid Flash. "Say, what I'd like to know is just what the charge against this Jinx is, anyway. Winston sort of sidestepped my question at the desk, which was kind of odd. Just bring her in for questioning. Questioning about what?" he asked.

But before the officers could answer, a Lincoln Navigator swung into the lot and went straight to them. The window rolled down and the driver, a guy in his late 30's with angular, almost too sharp features spoke past the passenger, a woman a few years younger, blond of brunette origin and pretty.

"Officers Strickland and Colavito, right?"

"Yeah, Captain"

The captain nodded to them.

Kid Flash raised one hand. "Kid Flash here, too, guess I won't get noticed till I wear something conspicuous, huh?"

The driver recognized him with a quick, unfriendly glance. "What've we got?" he asked Strickland.

"We got a somewhat batty old lady who thought she saw that pink haired girl, Jinx in the store" he shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not."

"Hey, sounded pretty ironclad to me, I mean, she had The Star as a reference" joked Kid Flash.

"What?"

"Yeah, Captain, she was comparing what she saw to a picture in The Star."

He rolled his eyes in resignation. Kid Flash stepped forward to the door of the navigator. "Captain, with just what crime was she charged?"

"You don't have a right to know that?"

"What? You were happy enough to send me in to take care of her if she was here but you won't tell me what the charge was?"

"Being a meta-human does not entitle you to restricted police information"

"A what?"

"Meta-human" he repeated. "People like you and that girl"

"Meta-human? That's a bit creepy. Sounds kind of eugenics and Third Reich-ish, doesn't it? Did Steel City have the copyright on Ubermenschen so you had to go with that?"

"Look, wiseass" he said shifting the SUV into park, "That's the accepted term in the community"

"Which community is that? I've always been called a hero and been proud of it. The guys doing wrong are the, uh, villains. You, uh, you wanna take notes or something?"

The captain swore under his breath then put the vehicle into drive and screeched into the nearest parking spot nearly jumping out of the vehicle and walking up to Kid Flash to stand over him looking down as the woman followed behind him.

"Listen skinny ass-"

"Whoa! Whoa! Before you even start" said Kid Flash "How 'bout backing off on the power postioning?" he said and took a long step back to be three feet from the captain, beside the unmarked car. "Okay, rant"

"It's in your file that you act like this sometimes. So I'm not surprised. But the days of people like you doing whatever they want are coming to an end"

"Time out" said Kid Flash making the hand signal and also glancing at the woman, now standing behind him to one side. "I just made a couple jokes. And as for doing whatever I want, I was with my girlfriend when this call came in and I answered it even though I would infinitely rather have stayed with her. Doing whatever I want! I-I've trashed my personal life a hundred times over to patrol and to answer calls like this. It doesn't mean much either way but if you want me to do dirty work for you I think I ought to be apprised of the charge. How will I know where to go from here in investigating her if I don't know what the charge is?

"There isn't a charge" came the voice from over his shoulder, the woman.

"Excuse me? You wanted me to capture a person against whom no charge has been filed?" said Kid Flash to the woman and Captain Brennan. "I'm so sorry about that Third Reich joke"

"Homeland Security, mister!" she said raising her voice and walking around to stand beside the Captain. "We can detain on suspicion," she explained.

"Suspicion of what?"

"Jinx is a meta-human" she said as if that was enough.

"She's practically a weapon of mass destruction, herself" added the captain.

Kid Flash turned to Strickland and Colavito. "You guys really need to be more careful about access to the drug lockup". Colavito smirked.

"She fires bolts of energy" he continued over Captain Brennan's furious expletive. "Hexes I guess. But I thought it was just a one on one sort of thing. And I've heard rumors that she's not even on the villain side of things any more, anyway."

"What a quaint, term" said the blond woman. "Villain. You seem like a very smart boy. You know history. You speak well. Do you realize how naïve the terms 'hero' and 'villain' are? Look at you. What are you, a 14, 15, maybe 16 year old boy?"

"In that area"

"And you could probably kill all of us in less than the blink of an eye, right?"

Kid Flash scowled. "I don't . . I don't think in terms like that. I don't go around thinking of-of whom I could kill"

She smiled. "Whom. Object pronoun. See. You're a very smart boy. And you know it's true. You have incredible power. You know just how incredible. Captain Brennan referred to your file. It's thick as a telephone book, all about you. We think we know what you can do. Shouldn't the city be at least a little concerned about all that power in the hands of a boy in the middle of puberty, his hormones raging, going through relationships with girls, his moods pinballing around? What if he pulls on his uniform some day in a particulary bad mood and doesn't feel like doing the right thing?"

"But I've always done the right thing! Don't I get credit for that? I've trashed my personal life in the process of doing this and I've pulled on this uniform in some of the blackest moods possible. But I've always tried to be a hero. Why doesn't that matter any more?"

Brennan jumped in. "You're more trouble than you're worth, that's why!"

"What?"

"The stats show it!" he added.

The blond woman stepped in as Kid Flash frowned at the ridiculousness of his statement. "Statistical analysis tends to show that clustering of villains" she made rabbit ear quotation marks "correlates with the presence of heroes." more rabbit ear quotation marks

"Um, it also correlates with concentrations of wealth and population, doesn't it?"

"Well-"

"And that doesn't prove weather the clustering of heroes or the clustering of villains was the antecedent condition or whether there's a predicating factor outside of either circumstance, does it?"

She scowled at him. He wasn't supposed to be this smart. The file just said wiseass and cocky. "Look, I don't have time to get into the whole study. The bottom line is that-"

"The bottom line is that you've got a conclusion that you can't defend against the alternative hypotheses that I raise. But you still want to make decisions on the basis of it"

She gave him a look that could kill. He met her eyes.

"But I'm the one whose power is troubling?"

"Listen, smartass. You two can debate the footnotes and ibid or ipso facto and all the studies on the side. The City's blown its public safety budget for three years running because of you meta-humans."

"Um, wasn't the City's budget blown by dealing with villains?"

"Allegedly good or bad, wherever there are concentrations of you people municipal infrastructure and budgets suffer. The supposedly good ones just attract the bad ones. And you get the same result"

"I like the way you just ignore my poking holes in that argument, but I think I get it. So much for Green Lantern and Green Arrow. Now, we'll fight crime with the newest hero, Green Eyeshade! Mild mannered accountant by day! And, well, mild mannered accountant by night, too."

"No, not just accountants. Think of it a little bit like the scenes in that movie L.A. Confidential. Did you see that one?"

"Sure"

"You didn't have trouble getting into an R rated movie?"

"No. I did the same as any other kid. I bought a ticket for a movie rated G then just walked into the theater for the R movie. Oh wait" he laughed "that must make me a criminal"

Brennan glared at him. "Well, you remember the scenes where they show the police captain supervising the beating of mob soldiers and capos to keep 'em out of L.A.? That's kind of the city's new stance about meta-humans"

Kid Flash raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want to cite, as a model for your new policies, proactive police brutality by a thoroughly corrupt film character who commits murder?"

The blond woman cast an angry glance at Brennan for doing such a poor job for their side.

"Of course that's not what we're proposing" she said. "But Homeland Security regulations give us broad discretion to make staying in this city uncomfortable for additional meta-humans"

"Glad I got in before the quota hit. And, again" said Kid Flash chuckling jovially, " I really want to apologize for that Third Reich crack. I don't know where that came from"

"What do you go" Brennan asked apropos of nothing as he advanced a step, "a buck thirty?"

"Less than that, I think. More like a hundred twenty five pounds or so"

"How old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen? What?"

"Like I told her, somewhere's around there. Why do you care?"

"I just don't think the public safety of the city should be hostage to the moods of a fourteen year old boy who hasn't shaved yet."

Kid Flash closed his eyes and sighed, regaining his composure before turning to Strickland and Colavito and shaking the hand of each. "Guys. I'm sorry about wasting your time with this poor debate. I just want you guys to know that I'm always trying to be on the right side"

Colavito nodded as he shook his hand and Strickland looked him in the eye as agreement. Kid Flash turned to the other two and offered his hand. Captain. . "

"Brennan" said the Captain trying to crush Kid Flash's gloved hand but finding that he was surprisingly strong.

"And . . "

"Captain Doyle" she said shaking his hand.

"Brennan and Doyle, huh? I might've thought people with irish surnames would be more friendly to a guy with orange hair. Oh well. We'll just have to agree to disagree. I say constitution. You say potahto"

With that, he stepped away from them and sped out of the Borders parking lot and then down the highway, at first visible to them, horizontal streaks of red at the bottom yellow in the middle and then a line of orange at the top and then so fast as to be impossible to follow.

"Can you imagine bein' able to do that?" sniffed Colavito looking the way he'd gone. "How fast does he go?"

"We've timed him from surveillance cameras at over mach 3 on city streets without somehow producing a sonic boom" said Captain Doyle. We used to think he stayed under mach 1 because he never boomed. But he gets over it easy. He's a very unusual boy"

Finally, Kid Flash sped home, changing to civilian clothes just up the road and walking the last hundred yards home. He went from the door to the fridge for some juice and an apple and to his room. What a weird night. So fantastic then horrible then kind of both again.

He wondered about what she had said. Did I do wrong for her? They didn't have jack on her but . . I didn't know that. But thinking it over, he realized that he'd felt as though he knew that she wasn't actively engaged in . . in evil, in crime. She couldn't kiss like that if she was doing stuff like that, could she? So real and pure, so complete. She couldn't be hurting anyone and feel like that. No way. Maybe it was technically wrong but, in the big picture I prevented her from being hurt. That's all I did.

Despite the evening's turmoil, he slept soundly. He had dreams of her and woke as if physically ready to act on them. He just made the bus and spent an exasperating day in school. The next to last day of school is frustratingly slow for kids everywhere. For a boy who could change how time ran around his person, it was excruciating watching the clock. He kept wondering, as he watched the second hand moving like a glacier, if he'd accidentally moved at super speed, just a hand or a turn of his head, perhaps and was moving through time at his own subjective rate so that he was creating extra time in between all the moments that everyone else experienced. He didn't want more time now. He wanted less. Much less.

The teachers barely made any pretense at all of there being any point to the day. He could drift off into thoughts of Jinx, of kissing her and start to become erect in his giant pants without anyone seeing. A few kids made fun of him, again, for getting his ass paddled and for getting thrown into the pigpen, but his reputation for an armor of indifference was well known. He looked blankly at a couple of the kids in the honors english class making fun of him and after a half minute they gave up.

He figured she knew that he would be in school till 2 or maybe 2:30, she didn't know his schools hours, but she'd heard him say that the teachers hated him and that he wouldn't read Catcher in the Rye. She would wait till some time after that to call. But she'd certainly be anxious. Who wouldn't be, waiting to find out what the deal was with the police being after you. She'd want to call asap so he had to be home right away. That way, also, he could answer the phone instead of his brat sister picking up the line and saying something stupid.

Finally, the bell of escape sounded and Wally strode rapidly out of school. He didn't stop at his locker, he just went from his last class, a room near the exit, out the doors. He was the first kid out so he felt free to run at what he imagined was top speed for Wally West. It was hard for him to tell. There wasn't a bright line of demarcation between his running as Wally West could have without super speed and running as Kid Flash could. It wasn't like the flipping of a switch. There was a whole spectrum of speed. At the intersection up the street from the school, he turned toward their house, jumped into the bushes and jumped out as Kid Flash, with his clothes tied into a neat bundle inside his shirt. He took off toward his house intending to vibrate through the wall of his room and be staring at the phone in the kitchen waiting for it to ring in a millisecond. But he saw an ambulance leaving the firehouse a mile back of him on a busy road crowded with cars heading to pick up kids from school.

He sighed with reluctance and sprinted ahead. He tapped the wing by the right ear of his uniform twice. Now he could hear police calls in that ear. Sure enough, there was chatter about a big accident at a certain intersection and shouts back and forth that the ambulance had better get there fast, people had already been down a while. He knew that intersection and poured on the speed to get there a fraction of a second later, sprinting between lines of stopped traffic. He zipped to a halt next to a policeman looking around frantically and intermittently shouting into a walkie talkie.

Two cars had collided and they'd forced two others off the road into a pole and a tree. Two more had had lesser introductions to jersey barriers in the median. Traffic was backed up for more than a mile in either direction making access for the ambulances extremely difficult. The road was under construction along that whole stretch and had no shoulder on either side. Getting past the stopped traffic was nearly impossible.

"Is there some way I can help, officer?"

"We've got some people hurt really bad, who need to be in a hospital 20 minute ago when this accident happened and all these jackasses" he said gesturing to the drivers from both directions, are blocking the way.

Kid Flash explained that he could get someone to the hospital in a blink as long as he could carry that person. The cop gave him a funny, unimpressed squint.

"I'm stronger than you'd think" said Kid Flash and the cop led him to a small car. Perhaps it'd been a Honda. It was hard to tell in its shredded and compacted state. There was a boy about eight years old in a twisted position in the front seat. The two of them pulled him free as gently as possible and the cop got a board from the trunk of his cruiser, sort of like the flat top of a gurney but without the padding. It folded in half to fit in the trunk and the cop unfolded it beside the car where they lay the boy down on it. Kid Flash knelt, picked up the board with the injured, bleeding boy on it and sped off. Ten seconds later a faint red and yellow blur materialized back into Kid Flash next to the cop.

"I had to stop and talk to the docs for a few seconds" he explained. He transported the boy's mother and little brother from the back seat on successive trips. He and the cop did a sort of triage judgement about which victim was most needy. There were a couple whom he couldn't carry, too. He told a 300 pound man that he was sorry and the man seemed to understand between groans of pain.

He delivered 11 people to the hospital before the ambulance even arrived. One woman might not have made it if forced to endure much longer before surgery and they told Kid Flash that another few minutes before injecting steroids into the eight year old boy and he might have been paralyzed by swelling at his 5th vertebrae. When he had to stop from exhaustion, kneeling in a shady spot, some of the motorists applauded him and a girl ran over with a soda for him. His picture was taken kneeling there beside the pavement just before the ambulances finally arrived to take away the remaining victims. A recovered Kid Flash sprinted for home after speaking to the EMT's and police and a reporter and photographer who'd made their way to the scene. He hoped Jinx hadn't already tried calling.

But she had. She thought about little besides Kid Flash all day after dreaming of him in her sleep. Wally? She frowned each time she said it. Wally? His name was Wally? That alone should convince people that he's not Kid Flash. He should be able to run around at near super speed with his orange hair showing openly and still have people say "Yeah . . but his name's Wally. So, no way. It's gotta be some other boy."

But as she considered him through the morning and into the afternoon, she started to see it differently. The name was given to him. He had nothing to do with that. But what attributes did he bring to it? He was so good looking and funny and kind and smart. Wally. That was Wally, cuter than any other boy, to her, and such a good kisser. That was Wally. Slowly the name came to mean his positive attributes and not the negative baggage she associated with it. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. She checked on her rose in its glass of water on the table like it was the symptom of her OCD. The previous roses had wilted brown rather quickly, just her luck, but this one seemed to be holding out fairly well. Hmmm.

At three o'clock on the dot she called. Area code then 555-4608. The line rang once, twice, three times. A girl's voice picked up.

"Yeah?"

She hadn't really thought about anyone but him answering. "Um, I'm calling for Wally. This is . . this is Jinny"

The voice on the other end of the line gasped in laughter and Jinx guessed that the girl had intended to put her hand over the mouthpiece but hadn't quite covered it. She could hear her talking to a couple other girls. _"There's a girl(!) calling for him!" "Oh my god! No!" "Yes!" Shrieks and laughter "What kind of . ." "Okay, okay, shhhhh. Watch!"_

"I've never talked to an insane person before" giggling in the background "or are you a blind girl?" more giggling.

"Is Wally there? If so, would you please just put him on the line"

"Wally West, right, that's who you want? With orange hair that he always wears a hat over?"

"That's him"

Giggling and more giggling, a few snorts and finally a gasping return to the line. "So, yo yo you wanna speak to the Gangsta Geek?" the voice affected a loud rap cadence barely finishing through hysterical laughter and Jinx could hear the two other girls also convulsed in laughter, and one laugh getting closer and finally, click, and a dial tone.

"What the hell!"

He's got a spaz for a sister. But her annoyance was mitigated by finding out another piece of information. Wally West, huh? Wally West. The boy's not only literate. He's alliterative. Wally West.

At 3:20, Jinx tried again. One ring, two rings, three rings.

"Yeah?"

Jinx sighed. The same stupid girl again. "This is Jinny. Is Wally there? I'd like to speak to him." This time, she covered the mouthpiece all the way. It took a good minute before she returned to the line and when she did she was gasping for breath as were the voices faintly audible in the background.

"Did you know he got his ass paddled by seniors in front of the whole school Friday? Everybody!"

"Is Wally there?"

"And then . . afterwards" Jinx didn't get it. She looked at her phone. The girl was making pig snorts and laughing hysterically as were the other two girls in the background. Again, one peal of laughter seemed to get closer to the phone and then, click, dial tone.

"You little frigging bitch!" Jinx looked angrily at the phone after hanging it up. Her eyes had glowed pink with rage. She could feel it. She calmed herself and in a great exercise of restraint, waited another 20 minutes to call.

One ring, two rings, followed by a laughing "Yeah?"

"Listen you little brat. He's my boyfriend. I'll see you some day and rip your empty little head off if you don't shut the hell up and answer this question. Is Wally there?"

The girl cleared her throat and Jinx could hear frantic whispering in the background.

"And after they paddled his geek ass, they threw Wally in the back of a truck and took all his clothes and then threw him over a fence into a giant pig pen. Nohesnothere!" she finished at high speed and then fell into convulsions of laughter before hanging up.

Jinx might have thrown off bolts of hex energy around the apartment but for the diverting consideration of that report. They took all of Wally West's clothes? They took all of Wally West's clothes and then threw him into a pig pen? They took all of Wally West's clothes. Wally West . . without . . any . . of his clothes.

Wally arrived home and for some reason his sister and her two equally ditzy friends fell on the floor laughing at the mere sight of him. His sister started to say something to him but couldn't get it out through her ridiculous laughter. He went to his room. A few minutes later the phone rang and he bounded out into the kitchen.

"I got it" he said and saw his sister and her friends fall off the couch onto the floor with their giggling. What the hell? He pulled the long cord so that he could get the receiver inside his room and close the door behind himself. Still, he spoke softly.

"Hello"

"W-Wally?"

"Jinx?"

"Yeah. Oh, you don't know what a relief it is to hear your voice."

"What's the matter?"

"Just trying to deal with that girl. Is that your sister? Trying to deal with her three times. I might kill her if I meet her"

Wally opened the door to his room and stuck his head out to look at his sister with homicidal intent. "Let's go upstairs" his sister anxiously advised her friends and they ran for the stairs.

"No jury would convict you" said Wally and she laughed. "I have mostly good news."

"Yeah?"

"There hasn't been a charge made against you"

"But . . you said that there had been a call and they wanted you to help . . "

"There was a call. This ridiculous old woman saw you walking with me and saw you and me kissing. She guessed it was you with the help of her effing copy of The Star"

"Great. Undone by a trash gossip tabloid"

"Well, the police don't believe her and it was like pulling teeth to get them to tell me what you'd been charged with and it turned out to be nothing, literally nothing"

"So they chase people who don't have any charge made against them?"

"I got in an argument with a police captain who's the new meta-human task force chief"

"The what? What's meta-human?"

"Apparently it's someone like you or me with powers"

"Why do they have a task force? What the heck's it supposed to do?"  
"Well, they wouldn't tell me much of their plans but they don't include a whole lot of friendliness even to someone like me recognized as a hero. They've got this idea that even heroes are trouble for the city's budget because heroes attract villains and attract infrastructure destroying, costly fights. They want to discourage any meta-humans from hanging around in their city so they'll pick up villains even without actual charges and they'll be jerks to me"

"What? I can't speak for anybody else but in the HIVE, we wanted successful robberies, not fights with heroes. And why mess with you!"

"I-I destroy my private life patrolling and answering the calls that I get on my ring and the end result is that they just lump me in with the guys from the Brotherhood of Evil anyway. Damn! I was late getting home today because I was running people from a big multi car accident to the hospital. Apparently they believe Gorilla Grodd might do the same thing."

He let out a long sigh. "Anyway. I'll deal with it. The important thing is that there's no warrant out for your arrest. So, would, um, would you like to get together tomorrow night".

"Wally? How 'bout we take a little more time?"

"A-a little more time's okay . . sure"

"How about you meet me at that intersection where you dropped me off at noon on Sunday?"

"Sunday at noon. Got it . . " he fumbled for what to say. "I'll look forward to it, Jinx"

"Me too, Wally, bye"

"Bye".

Wally sighed leaning back against the wall. Sunday? So, we're going too fast. He let out a long slow sigh and heard his sister and her friends leaving going out the front door, he hung up the phone and went back to his room. He started reading a guide to modern handguns.

The phone rang, snapping him out of his concentration. He looked at it a second. Could she be calling again? Nah. He picked up.

"Hello, West residence"

"May I please speak to Wallace West" asked a deep voice that seemed oddly familiar to Wally.

"This is he"

"Is this line safe and are you free to speak," said the voice as Wally started to place it.

"Sure. It's the only phone line we've got and I'm the only one home"

"Good. This is Cyborg. Your-"

"Cyborg!" Wally could hardly contain his excitement. He suspected what this meant.

"-your application interview is scheduled for Thursday at 1 p.m. Can you make it?"

"Oh my gosh! You bet! Thurday! One pm! I'll be there! Thanks!"

"You're welcome. Good luck"

-click-


	8. Job Interview

Author's note: Thanks for the very kind words in reviews. I'm as much of a praise whore as anyone else. It might be some time before I add another chapter. I wrote 1, 5 and this one and filled in the others. I've got a last paragraph but I'm not sure how I'll get there.

Wally's mind raced that night thinking about the interview for the next several hours. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! Who'll speak to me? One of them? A couple? All of them? What'll they ask? What should I say? Should I bring anything else with me? He felt like ultra hyper Wally of the end of 5th and start of 6th grades, barely able to control his newly super speed infused body.

But he was almost 15 now, a young man not just a kid. Deep breaths!. Deep breaths, he reminded himself. Relax your muscles. Relax every muscle. Feel the looseness go all the way out to your fingertips and to your toes. Ahhhhh. He let his thoughts roll on. Will I . . will I have to prove my speed to them, give them a demonstration? Nah. That's silly. Cyborg saw me doing recon at the Jump City College Xinothium storage facility. He knows what I can do. But what will they want? What am I supposed to do at a-at a job interview? There was only one solution to literate Wally.

He changed into his Kid Flash uniform and super sped to the library and its business books section. There were 3 books totally or partially about job interviews. From 11:10:00 pm to 11:10:05 pm, job applicant Kid Flash read them. He read them over again a few seconds later and again a minute after that. Now, he felt like he really had a handle on how to comport himself. He felt like he would go into the interview with all the savvy of a high powered middle aged corporate exec.

The next day was the last day of school. But for Wally, with the prospect of becoming a Teen Titan, it wasn't just the last day of 8th grade. It might be his last day of school ever, at least of that kind of school. He was lost in thought on this subject all during the raucous bus ride in to school. I have nothing to lose, he realized. Nothing at all.

He went off in his very first class. First, Mrs. Levy gave everyone their final grades in honors english. She went from desk to desk talking to students, pointing to a grade on a sheet of paper with all of them listed after checking her book to see what the next student was getting. She finished with Mary Wohlers and walked to Wally's desk pointing at A+ with her pen before looking at his face for the expected smile. She saw no smile. She saw anger. "Wally, what's the matter? You couldn't get a better grade". He said nothing. After finishing with the last few students, Mrs. Levy started a lecture on Shakespeare. At least, she tried to start a lecture on Shakespeare.

"Allright, class. I know there're only 40 minutes more of 8th grade english for you-"

Some of the boys clapped and whistled.

"-but how about we have one more class. I want to talk about Shakespeare and his-"

"No"

"-and his, um, excuse me, Wally but sit down, about Shakespeare and his-"

"No"

"Wally! Sit down." she said plaintively. But he looked oddly energized standing there beside his desk. She had an inkling that he wouldn't listen.

"No. I've had enough. That's it. No more lectures. No more . . no more any of this crap. Whose idea was this?" he asked holding his arms out as if gesturing not to the room even but the whole school. "Whose idea was this that in 2005 we should be doing this? This is insane!" he nearly shouted and the class broke down largely on the basis of gender with boys grinning and girls looking at him nervously but grade grubber boys and grrls switching sides. "This-this whole stupid arrangement was invented in the 19th century to prepare kids to stand by a damn machine in a mill all day long bored out of their minds while making sure the power loom stayed on track. I read about it. This doesn't make any sense any more and probably didn't then, either."

"Wally, why are you so upset. You got the best grade in-"

"I don't CARE about my grade! Didn't that get across from the fact that I dress like this and don't write the things that all of us know you want to read in our essays and don't try and suck up to you like him and him and her and her" he said pointing to the obsequious teacher's pets in the class. The boys were smirking and chuckling and clapping with every line now.

"Wally, what's the matter?" said Mrs. Levy trying to stave off complete anarchy.

"What's the matter is this stupid system we follow out of habit flushes down a rat hole the tremedous energy we all have."

"You have energy?" shot back one of the girls he'd identified as a suckup. "That's a laugh. You sit there practically comatose every day and have to be called on three times before you notice"

He nodded as some kids laughed. "That's right. But I'd love to feel engaged in what we're doing. I'd love to be reading something in here that really interests me. But whether or not anything we talk about interests us is somehow irrelevant here. Why? We're not 6 year olds. We're 14 and 15. We're people with fascinations and predilections and manias for things that, if the system allowed us to follow we'd do three times as much work on as we did on this crap we were forced to read"

"Now, Wally, I have a degree of sympathy for you, with your background but crap?"

"My background?" he sighed angrily. "What's that got to do with anything? I'm poor. So what? Did our reading choices interest any of the other guys in class? How 'bout it guys? Let's see a show of hands. Did anyone want to read any of the books assigned to us?"

Mrs. Levy looked around the room. Some of the boys laughing and smirking at his rant not only didn't raise their hands. They leaned over to touch their palms to the floor. She looked, hopefully, to the two boys he'd identified as suckups. But even to them, this seemed to provide an interesting opportunity. One sat on his hands. Levy turned to the other. "It was all girl crap" he muttered and grabbed the steel tube of the desk frame as the boys broke into whoops and cheers. Even him!

"Hey, I didn't like the junk we read either" said one of the grrls. "Don't put it all off on us" Other girls jumped in as well, taking shots at the things they read. The girl who'd fired back at Wally was going to say something in defense of Emily Dickinson and the other readings but feared all the other kids would gang up on her and kept her mouth shut.

"And what's with all the stupid training wheels reading? God! What does this symbolize? What does that symbolize? Enough with the effing symbolism and the foreshadowing and spoon feeding to us themes and what every story's supposed to mean. Just let us read stories that interest us. Let us put ourselves into our work. We can do better. Just let us."

"Yeah!" the boys and then girls too broke into shouts and cheers. The teachers from the rooms on either side of that one came to the doorway to check and see if everything was okay. They were surprised to see Wally West in the front of the class and Mrs. Levy seated off in a corner but she told them it was allright.

Wally went on to his next class and gave Mr. Hopkins, the history teacher both barrels as well, with the same result. All the simmering resentments the kids in class had exploded to the surface and Hopkins sat stunned while Wally West and occasionally Wally's former friend, Aaron, told him all the things they thought were wrong with his class and the school in general.

On the way to his third period study, Wally was being cheered in the hallway like a liberating revolutionary. When he got to his fourth period class, the teacher looked at him coming through the doorway as though Wally might produce an Uzi from under his floppy shirt and shoot him. Wally led the charge against the way Mr. Campbell slavishly followed the chemistry book and his other faults but there were a dozen other kids ready to jump in now. Campbell was reduced to looking skittishly around the room and apologizing.

Fifth period was Mrs. Corcoran's pre-calculus class and the word had obviously gone out through the staff room by this point. She looked at Wally as though he was a wild beast who might leap to her desk and then rip her jugular from her throat at any moment. The school's vice principal walked in before class began and took the empty seat behind Wally's.

"I hope you don't have another little demonstration in mind, Mr. West"

"Oh, I do sir" said Wally cheerily and he smirked at the vice principal recoiling slightly. Class began with Mrs. Corcoran always keeping an eye on Wally. Kids were giggling in anticipation. She made one open ended remark about feedback and Wally stood up. He detailed all the ways that he thought her class could be improved.

"Get out of here! You're done for the day, mister" said the vice principal pointing to the door. Wally did as told, walking to the door but excessively slowly, getting another two minutes to complain about the general nature of the school and how classes were run. Kids clapped and cheered as he was led out by the vice principal. In the hallways, kids came peeking out of doorways as Wally went past.

"Give it to da man, West!" shouted one kid so that it could be heard down the hall and this was met with laughter and more shouts so that kids were coming from every room as he passed now, on the way to his locker. While he walked, Wally tried to engage the vice principal in a debate on how the school ran but the man didn't even try to hold up his side of things. He only growled a few commands to get going. "Anyone hear him defend all this? Did any of you?" laughed Wally as the vice principal pulled him along down the hallway. At the doorway out the building, the vice principal gave him a shove with a score of kids just over his shoulder and noted "This will all go on your record, West"

"You know what you can do with that record" said Wally to cheers and laughter before spinning around and walking home. What a catharsis. How he hated that place. Even if just for half a day, to speak up about what a waste of human potential it was felt great.

Wally smiled all the way home, but had already moved on in his thoughts. School was the past. The Teen Titans were the future. He was in his Kid Flash uniform in his room at home at 8 the next morning. The excitement was too much. He couldn't stand to still be in his baggies and knit. He ran through, in his mind, all the advice of the business books, again. But he didn't feel 100 sure of how to handle a few things. He vibrated through the wall of his bedroom and sprinted to the library at super speed. The library wasn't open yet but he just vibrated through their walls, too. He found the 3 books he wanted and took a few seconds to read them again. He sighed with satisfaction. Okay. I've got this nailed.

He did some light patrolling, really not much more than pleasant sightseeing of the region and arrived 10 minutes ahead of the appointed time. He was buzzed inside and sped up the stairs to the 11th floor lobby as instructed, brimming with confidence that he knew how to handle this situation. He slowed at the 11th floor door and entered the lobby at normal speed and took a deep breath. There, waiting for him were Robin and Raven. He shook Raven's hand first.

"Thank you for giving me some of your time" he said.

She just nodded.

He took a step to one side and said the same thing to Robin. They shook hands, red and green gloves both squeezing as hard as they could. Their eyes met.

Hate.

Maybe it wasn't quite hate, perhaps strong antipathy or unmistakable mutual dislike. All Wally's plans suddenly evaporated. He felt unsteady on his feet. What I can do for the organization! What my skills are! How my skills will make your other employees better! How I can grow with the company! And more, it all disappeared in a split second. He did not like Robin. Robin did not like him. It was absolutely certain on both sides. It was just one of those things. Maybe he was making the same face back at Robin, the uptight jerk, the same slight narrowing of the eyes and odd downturn of the mouth. He wasn't sure. He'd lost all his bearings.

Wally tried to recover his composure from the realization that one of the two people who would determine his fate was against him. He followed them into a conference room off the lobby and sat down at a long rosewood table as directed. The room was silver and navy blue, the predominant Tower color scheme. The chair in which he was directed to sit could have fit three of him, it was so much wider than his hips. He felt small. Robin and Raven sat opposite him. Their chairs seemed higher than his adding to the feeling. And Robin pressed a button on a control. Horizontal blinds opened behind them letting the sun shine from behind them at him.

In a pattern that continued throughout the interview, Raven said nothing but looked questioningly at her teammate. He gave a very small nod.

"Well" began Robin. "We get a lot of applications. You'd be surprised how many people think they're good enough to be a Titan. At least you had a Justice Leaguer's reference. Why do you think you're good enough?"

Wally tried to ignore his dislike of Robin's scratchy voice and took a deep breath. "I-I hope I'm good enough. I mean, I think I can help the team. It um, it was very um kind of Flash to send a recommendation letter"

"Why do you think you're good enough?" repeated Robin through clenched teeth.

"Um, well, I-I have an ability, super speed that is, that is, um, very rare I-"

Looking at Robin was disconcerting to him. He couldn't get past the intensity of their mutual feeling of dislike. Robin's expression might have been considered neutral. But there were all sorts of little markers of hostility. Eyes slightly narrowed, brows slightly knit, jaw clenched, muscles flexing. He decided to speak to Raven instead. While not looking sympathetic or friendly at all, she at least seemed impartial. There was an odd quality to her gaze, so intense that it seemed like she was seeing to the very core of him but it was certainly preferable to Robin's which didn't want to see any of him.

"-I think I'm one of um only two people who have it. There are other speedsters but not like Flash and me. I can run across the country and back, east coast to west coast to east in under a minute. In addition to being able to do anything at super speed, I can vibrate my molecules and pass through solid objects. I can vibrate my molecules in a different way and make the object that I pass through explode with kinetic energy a moment later. I can be a terrific recon guy for a team. If a call comes in about a location in Jump City, I can speed out of the tower and circle the area a dozen times and report back before anybody else has even left the tower"

"Do you have any experience working with a team?" Robin sniffed dismissively.

Kid Flash's mouth opened but nothing came out. Why is he angry with me? Again, Kid Flash had to look at Raven to answer. "Um, well, no, not a team like the Titans. But I have worked with Flash and I recently worked with Speedy and Cyborg to stop the apparent Brotherhood of Evil scheme to steal Xinothium from Jump City College."

"What are your weaknesses?"

"Um, well, " he turned to Raven again. "I wish my stamina was a bit better. If I'm exhausted I can't super speed and I'm vulnerable. I-I fight pretty well-"

Robin let out an unimpressed sniff. Kid Flash glanced at him.

"-pr-pretty well but just through using super speed. I-I really should take some martial arts training"

"Why haven't you if you know that's what you need?"

"My-my family doesn't have the money for that sort of thing"

"Can you prove that?"

"Pr-prove that we don't have money? I-I'm not sure how I'd . . "

"Oh wait" said Robin flipping through a thick file and producing an eight and a half by eleven copy of a tax assessor's photo of the extremely modest West home. "Is this where you live?"

"Yes. That's where I live with my family"

"We'll take your word about no money"

Kid Flash clenched his jaw as he slowly exhaled staring at Robin. You fucking bastard.

Again, Robin got a questioning look from Raven. Again, he nodded and continued.

"Well, have you done anything to improve your skills aside from simply using them. Did you make any effort to augment them?"

"I read a library" Wally answered. "I mean, I read all the books in the local City library"

"That's impossible. Don't make ridiculous claims"

"It's not impossible! I-I did"

"That library has 25,000 books. At 300 pages a book and 3 minutes a page it would've taken you . . fif . . teen . . thousand-"

"Six hundred twenty five days. Just short of 43 years"

Robin's expression only slightly changed at Kid Flash doing the math even quicker than him.

"But it would only take that long for someone experiencing normal time. I-I could leave this room between your pronouncing two syllables and experience what would seem like a week's time between your saying "im" and "poss" in the word impossible. The term Flash used was 'subjective time frame'. At super speed, my time frame isn't the same as everyone else's and I can do things that normally take a week while everyone else is blinking. I don't mean to brag. It's fascinating, especially at first, but it's a bit lonely too. Anyways, I read all those books to help out in my patroling to know science and history, armaments and utilities and everything else that I could that would help. It-it made school even harder to deal with, though, even more boring"

"Ah, your school record"

"You have my school record?"

"Yes, we do" said Robin flipping past pages of school photos of little orange haired Wally, past california achievement test results always in the 98th or 99th percentile and past exemplary grades to comments from teachers under the most recent picture, him in a red and yellow knit hat, orange hair completely covered. The comments in the elementary school section had been pretty boring. "Wally's very rambunctious but essentially a good boy". Somewhere around the end of fifth grade and beginning of sixth there was a change. "This boy fidgets at 100 mph! You have to see it to believe it. Ritalin!", "This boy is the reason ritalin was invented. Highest dose allowed by law, please!", "I think I need to take ritalin just for having watched this boy 45 minutes each day!" and "Still a good boy but something is physically off with Wally!". But there was nothing in the record of him ever having taken a single pill. Despite that, a year or so later they all start commenting about him as "withdrawn" and "unaccessible". "Went from caffeinated to comatose" said one teacher. "Never seen a boy change like this!" says another. But his grades stayed up or even got better even as the comments got worse.

"And I have to say that your record of character there is . . um . . spotty." Robin told him with a faint smile.

Wally pleaded his case to Raven. "I-I've always been bored at school. It's always been too easy but-"

"Do you have to be 'sullen and distant' because it's easy?"

"Excuse me?"

Robin read from teacher comments in Wally's file. "Wally is sullen and distant and shows only minimal interest in anything at Junior High". He picked up another sheet. "This is from a gym teacher. 'Very uncoordinated and unable to function at all as part of a team"

"That's not fair" Wally pleaded to Raven. "I mess up on purpose in gym class so that no one suspects that I'm Kid Flash"

"Is that why you're quote 'hostile to the point of complete disrespect' unquote according to another teacher?"

"I dont' know which teacher said that but I don't think I've been hostile or-or sullen. Maybe distant but-"

Robin chuckled. "So, you'll admit to distant but not sullen"

Wally sighed. "I admit that my attitude could be better. I admit that I'm not friendly at school. But I'm not . . hostile. It's unpleasant for me, extremely unpleasant at times but I control myself. Hell, I-I got a serious hazing leaving school last week and I didn't beat them up at super speed or take off at mach 3. I took all this paddling and crap because my civilian identity would"

"You know that if you were living here you'd be more cut off from your family and friends"

Kid Flash quickly nodded. "The demands of patroling have driven my friends away, for the most part anyway. At least here I could talk about what I do with someone else"

"And if you live here you'll have to stay away from drugs" said Robin. He pressed a button on the control and the blinds closed. The wall to Wally's right opened to reveal a 42 inch plasma tv screen. Wally was stunned. Drugs? Me? What-what footage is this going to be?

"This is you, isn't it?" said Robin and not well enough lit footage played that Wally still immediately recognized. It was the area outside the rave he'd been to in March. There he was in his ultra baggies, gray shirt and dark red knit beside Zach and Khalid.

"Biometric measurements are a wonderful thing"

"I don't deny it. Yes, that's me . . and . . two friends . . it was one of the last times we did something together before my patroling pushed those guys away, too. They saw that I was feeling down about my-my family"

"Were you still feeling down after this?" smiled Robin and the footage played to show someone giving Wally a pill that Wally quickly swallowed.

"How often have you taken ecstasy West?" demanded Robin as the lights came back on and the blinds reopened permitting the sun to shine in his eyes.

"I took that one pill that one time. I didn't even know at first. That's all, that one time. I don't drink or smoke. I had 4 beers once, wine another time and smoked a joint with 3 other people once but that was months and months ago."

"You'd take a drug test?"

"Yes"

"You know that what you did was illegal?"

Wally sighed. "My friends gave me a pill that they thought would make me feel better. I only realized afterward that it was ecstasy. I-I'm surprised that's not sort of under the radar screen. How'd you get that footage anyway? Why would somebody bother to film that?"

"We put your biometrics into the computer and searched versus any recorded footage. There was a federal investigation of ecstasy trafficking that included filming that rave you attended"

Just jealous because you're too much of a stiff to dance, thought Wally to himself.

"We've also got information from your file from the city police, West." chuckled Robin. "They really don't like you, do they?"

"That's not true. I get along great with almost every officer I've met. But there are two captains in something called a meta-human task force with whom I had an argument. They explicitly said that their intention is to get people like us, as well as villains, out of the city"

"That's not what this report says. It says you were disrespectful and belligerent. Kinda sounds like hostile and sullen, again, doesn't it?"

"Was it signed off on by officers Colavito and Strickland. Those guys were there, too and I've worked on cases with them. They wouldn't sign off on a lie like that. It was just an argument."

"Yup. Colavito and Strickland" ad-libbed Robin just to see his reaction. Kid Flash slumped back in his chair open mouthed.

"Oooooookay, West" chirped Robin, a smile at the corners of his mouth as he stood up and extended a hand. "Don't call us, we'll call you"

It's over? That's-that's it? Kid Flash could barely make himself rise in response. He limply shook Robin's hand, the green glove now almost crushing the red glove. "Thank . . thank you for your time" he offered not looking him in the eyes. He shook hands with Raven as well, thanked her and shuffled to the door.

He stepped out into the lobby where Beast Boy was waiting, pacing.

"Hey! Kid Flash! So they were doing your interview?"

"Yeah"

"How'd it go, dude?"

"It's-it's hard to say with these things" said Kid Flash unable to make eye contact. "Excuse me, please, I-I've got to go"

He sped off down the stairwell and then across the water to Jump City.

**B O O M !**

A tremendous sonic boom followed him because he chose not to vibrate his molecules to prevent it the way he normally would. It was like a customer peeling out as he left the parking lot of a business that had mistreated him. He stopped at a state park observation area across the water and looked back at Titans Tower, screaming "Damn!" at the top of his lungs. "Damn!" he repeated and he paced back and forth swearing a blue streak, many of the epithets interspersed between the words "boy" and "wonder".

Beast Boy heard the sonic boom and snickered. "But sometimes it's easy to say how it went"

Robin emerged from the conference room, file in hand, trailed by an agitated Raven.

"What was that?"

"What was what?" said Robin blandly and continuing to walk on before Raven tugged at his shoulder.

"Talk about hostile! Have you met him before?"

"No"

"Are you sure?"

Robin chuckled. "I think I would remember a kid with orange hair and that attitude?"

"What attitude?"

"It's subtle. It's in the way he carries himself or at least how he did till the interview"

"Oh. So, you were putting him in his place?"

"Dudes!" Beast Boy interrupted. "How bad was this?"

"He was completely unfair to our orange haired applicant" said Raven turning to him. "He disliked him from the second he met him"

"It just happens sometimes. It wasn't planned"

"It happens with every animal" offered Beast Boy.

"He dislikes me, too, doesn't he?" asked Robin in defense.

Raven sighed. "Yes. It completely threw him. He had other things he wanted to say to us and never did because you wouldn't let him be at ease. You just had to keep chipping away at him"

"He should keep his cool better"

"The Flash and Cyborg say he keeps his cool fine on missions. But a kid ten days short of 15 probably hasn't been to many job interviews. And what was that cheap shot with the picture of his family's home"

"It was evidence" Robin said trying to sound innocent.

"What was this, dude?" Beast Boy asked of Robin, but Raven answered.

"He made fun of Kid Flash by showing a picture of his family's dilapidated little home. That was low."

"It was corroborative"

"It was cheap! He's poor. And he's embarassed about it. And you rubbed his face in it"

"Dude! You made fun of the kid because his family's poor?"

"I-I . ." Robin tried to regain his composure. Was I really that bad?

"Lying to him about what was in his police file!" she shook her head. "And that thing about the rave?" she continued shaking her head.

"Dudes! He's a raver? That's so cool!" chuckled Beast Boy and he searched for a play on words to do about her name but let it drop to watch their argument.

"He did something illegal"

Raven sighed. "You didn't tell him that you had the FBI's lip reading transcript of every word he said on camera and that it went like this-" she said snatching the file from Robin's hand and flipping through to a sheaf of stapled pages. "Oh, you already highlighted it. Good. So we know that you knew exactly how innocent his use of ecstasy was-"

"Ecstasy! Dudes! Kid Flash uses ecstasy!"

"He claimed he's only used it once and I judge that he was being completely truthful. Here's how it went, Beast Boy" she said holding the transcript out and reading it. "Subjects numbers 36, Clash shirt, 37, orange hair and 38, shirt with message in farsi, approached the tent where target's employee was selling the product. 37 and 38 continued past to urinate near the embankment. 36 started to follow but quickly entered the tent, presented a bill to target's employee and left with approximately 6 pills. 36, 37 and 38 walked back toward the warehouse entrance and spoke with their backs to the camera for a minute, then turned toward the parking lot.

37: It's my stomach

38: I thought you said it was your head?

37: Allright, allright. It's a-a family thing. Sorry. I'm kinda wound up about it

36: Well you can't be all depressed at a rave, dude. Here, try this? (offering ecstasy pill)

37: What's that?

36: Just a pep pill.

37: Zach. I can't have caffeine. I get nutty, there's something um funny about my metabolism. I-

36 Relax. It's a caffeine-less pep pill. Gingko or garlic or something

37: (taking pill and swallowing) okay. Thanks

"Oooooo. Real dangerous intent there, Robin. Regular orange haired french connection that number 37, huh?"  
"It was still illegal. If any of us took ecstasy, even just once, it'd be illegal, too"

Beast Boy's eyes went wide. He looked to the ceiling and whistled briskly.

A flummoxed Robin continued. "The-the point wasn't to pin him on the charge of one harmless use of a pill-"

"One use? Completely harmless!" seconded Beast Boy with a dramatic "safe" gesture of his arms.

Robin looked at him as he tried to regain his train of thought. "The-the point was to see if he would tell the truth. I thought he was evasive"

"Evasive? He told you the truth"

"But he tried to minimize it"

"One use. Completely harmless!" repeated Beast Boy.

"You didn't want him to have a chance" said Raven. "You showed all the interpersonal abilities you attribute to Batman in there" she said and walked off.

Robin wanted to retort but his voice caught in his throat. He was left looking confused in the lobby beside Beast Boy who leaned toward him before leaving. "Completely harmless!" he whispered.

Kid Flash went home and lay on the bed in his civilian uniform replaying everyone's words in his head over and over. He got a brief diversion from mowing a neighbor's lawn. As he left, the neighbor asked if there was something wrong. He said he'd never seen Wally do the job so slowly. Wally thanked him He trudged back home and another thought occurred to him. He would be part of the same school system next year, the school system that saw him as a dangerous revolutionary. This will all go on your record, West. Damn. Half the teachers'll go out of their way to slap me down. Damn. Worse than getting cheated on his grades was the prospect of another year of mind numbing lectures. Oh god. He let his head fall limply backward as he walked along.

He went from putting the mower away in the garage back to his room. He tried to work up some enthusiasm for The Abstract of Physical Security Systems or The Forensic Ballistics Handbook but couldn't. All he could think of was the interview. Don't call us, we'll call you. You motherf . . ! That's just rubbing my face in it. That's spiking the ball in my face and then doing a touchdown dance. Don't call us, we'll call you! Why not just do a riverdance jig on my application form? Why not just cut the application into 3 inch wide strips and tape them to the end of a roll of toilet paper and put it in the public bathroom at the tower, while you're at it. Don't call us, we'll call you!

He forced a sigh again, trying to calm himself but it just wouldn't happen. He considered pulling on his red and yellow and patrolling to burn off all the anger he was feeling but decided that this could actually be one of those times like that fake blond woman, Captain Doyle, had referred to, of him going out patrolling in a terrible mood and doing something wrong.

He had no appetite and barely ate at dinner, only five bowls of cereal, before retreating back to his room and staring at the ceiling some more. The process had advanced to his reproaching himself now as he beat himself up for every stammer, every disconnected phrase or poor choice of response.

"I-I hope I'm good enough" he mocked his own words by pronouncing them in a girlish sing-song cadence. "You frigging idiot. Maybe you should hope to be smart enough and for, doggone it, people to like you too while you're at it! How could I say something so frigging weak as an opening line! Good thing you read those three books you idiot. Couldn't have come up with a leadoff statement like that without lots of prep, yessirree! And um . .um . . um . . um . . um . . um . . ! I must've sounded like a stuttering fricking moron."

Beside himself, he had renewed anger at Robin. Hair gel jockey. Probably gets it the same place as the guy in There's Something About Mary! "We'll take your word about no money" and that smile. That effing smile! God! What a pathetic little prick! He snarled out 6 and 7 epithet prefixes for the boy wonder. "And miss debutante ball mask or whatever the hell that is, turning up his nose at my fighting ability! I'll show you fighting ability if you ever cross me you asshole. See how weak your kung fu looks going against super speed you asshole! I'll give you a hundred hooks from each fist in a second, miss fighting snob." He imitated the little sniffing sound Robin had made when he'd said he was a good fighter. We'll see if the doctors can find enough to wire together for a jaw for you if you fight me"

He calmed a bit with a sigh and considered some more implications of this. Four more years of living here. Four more years of little brat sis. Four more years of Mom and Dad's indifference. Four more years of being made fun of for where I live. Four more years of not being able to tell most any of the people around me about what's really happening in my life. Ugh. He felt flattened, as though he'd been dropped from a high building.

He recalled the thought that had been running through his head all the previous evening, the hope that Jinx would call so he could share his excitement about the upcoming interview and just to hear her voice. His wish was completely the opposite now. Please don't let Jinx call me now. Please. Not now. I'll look like the weakest lamest wimp if I have to talk to her now. I'm supposed to be strong for her and help her make a transition to a better life and here I am, crushed.

He turned the situation around, upside down and over and over looking at it from every side and all possible implications of it till he absentmindedly looked over at his cracked in half clock radio. 11:45. He glumly pulled off all his clothes and slipped under the covers. He realized his eyes were getting watery as he stared up and decided that the strongest thing to do was to just let it happen. So, he lay there a while feeling salty tears run down his cheeks onto his pillow. The only way there was to make everything work and now it's impossible. What the hell do I do now? I don't know how much more of this life I can take.

He stared idly out the window at the stars, feeling out of place beneath such a beautiful night sky.

Over in one second. The moment we met. How ridiculous is that?

While he was looking out the window, he heard a sound from outside and then saw Empress, the neighbor's little abyssinian land in the open window before jumping down onto his bed and then walking to sit in a low pose atop the fastest boy alive's bare chest, purring furiously. Wally pet her under her chin and then behind her whiskers, atop her head and down her back.

"Oh, Empress, girl. I didn't want to leave you. You didn't bribe Robin with some nip to turn me down, did you, Empress, huh, Empress?"

PurrrPurrrPurrrPurrrPurrrPurrrPurrrPurrrPurrrPurrr

"Not gonna talk huh? A wise choice when being interrogated by a superhero detective type like Kid Flash"

The cat lay down contentedly on his chest, luxuriating in the warmth of the speedster's body. For minutes, Wally stared at it. Empress didn't know that he was poor, didn't know that his parents didn't have any love at all for him, didn't know how stupid school was, didn't know that some of the cops didn't want to give him credit for his work or what a jerk Robin with his fem glued on mask was. The idea that the importance of these things was optional pleased Wally. He bunched up the old quilt at both sides of his body to try and keep himself in place as he slept and let Empress stay atop him.


	9. Third Date

After talking to Kid Flash on the phone, Jinx hung up and muttered to herself "What'd I just do?"

She sniffed at the realization. Put him off for five days. Five days! He'd have showed up in two seconds if he had the address to super speed to. Just, yeah it's such and such number such and such street then . . one . . two . . KnockKnockKnock! Just like that. He would've. For some reason, thinking of his ardor, a recollection came to mind, in those blissful moments kissing him on the bench in the book store, a split second glance down at the front of his pants. Hard to be sure with pants like that, but . . ! She wondered if he knew what was going on inside her at the same time. Boys think they're the only ones who . . react. Well, he did have that one hand on my . . . Her eyes went wide. He must've felt . .

She sighed making her way to the window and facing out but not really noticing anything. Okay, he had at least an inkling that there was some reciprocity happening there in the book store.

But more than that, the boy did wrong. How did he say it at that mansion, this crime fighting thing that's taken over my life? Was that it? Taken over my life. And then he goes against all of that! All of it! He admitted that he didn't know what the charge was. He only found out afterward about the new anti-anyone with powers policy. He did wrong . . for me. The image of traveling through the city at super speed flashed by. What else could an image like that do? It was a blur to begin with, everything pulled into being horizontal lines, lights and buildings, everything a blur stretched into a line by him. How the hell does he see when he's doing that? That's more than just a get used to it or adjust to it sort of thing to see anything clearly during that. It was twice as fast, no more than that, three times or four or, ugh, who knows but him. It was a lot faster than the first time that he said was 300 miles an hour. And he was breaking the rules doing it. He is sooooo committed, Wally West is.

"A-a little more time's okay . . sure". She smirked thinking of the tone of his voice and the pause before 'sure'. Talk about words going in one direction and feeling in the other. You aresooooo committed, Wally West.

She sighed and made her way over and flopped down on the futon to consider all this some more.

"What about me?", she wondered. I'm not? I'm the one maybe walking away from her life! If that's not a sign of possible commitment then what is? She calmed down. Then why had it been the right decision to not see him for five days? She lay there on the futon thinking about it. It'd felt emotionally right at that moment. But she'd resolved to admit to herself everything that she did and why. She wouldn't be some ditzy emotional girl careening back and forth in this relationship. That's for Starfire or somebody like that, not somebody who'd made her own way in the world. She'd be a woman, a strong woman.

That was a portion of it. To see him right away, to surrender immediately to the desire for those lips, the desire to get both hands, this time, on the seat of his pants, would be weak. Nothing wrong with lusting for a boy. Boys like him deserve to be treated as lust objects . . and as real people if they have that in them, too. But to give in so easy, even for a boy whose shape suggests the incredible things he can do, well, that was for weak girls. Besides. He'd waited two weeks. Two whole weeks! Five days is impossible? Five days is a herculean task when he waited two weeks? Is he so special?

First her lips curled, gently and then completely. And then she laughed out loud at the question.

Another portion was that the idea of punishing him, of hurting him by making him wait five days was very appealing. She thought of the blurb of information, his spazzy sister had given her. A bunch of seniors paddled his buns in front of the whole school. God! To have been there! And then, they-they took his clothes and threw him in a pig pen. She burst out laughing. They took . . his . . clothes. Oh Wally! She lingered on this thought for a few minutes, smiling deliciously.

Yes, there was a certain kind and degree of pleasure in punishing him with delay. Freedom for such pleasure came from a feeling of the strength of the boy and a certainty that such things couldn't really hurt him.

And maybe there was some fear of a boy so strong that humiliations like that would just bounce off him. That didn't have to happen to him. He had to have let it happen, she realized. The average big dumb jock senior couldn't touch him if he didn't let it happen. So, not only did it not faze him afterward but he'd had to consciously choose to let it happen in the first place, probably to prevent any suspicion about what he really was.

Maybe there was fear of domination by such a strong boy, maybe not in any malevolent way but just that the boy becomes a bit suffocating. What was the line from "That's the Way I've Always Heard it Should Be"?. You say we'll soar like two birds through the sky but soon you'll cage me on your shelf. I'll never learn to be me first, by myself . .

That song is so fricking classic and so dead on. But-but he didn't try to control. You can do better. That was him. You can do better. In two dates he hasn't said a word about what I should do. It's just been him and me. She sighed again, worry of suffocation dissipated.

Hmm. This . Intelligent, sometimes perceptive and . . she chuckled then kissed the air, Mmmmuh! picturing him in his tight Kid Flash uniform, boy. All those intentions to discuss powers and their influence and the importance of when you got them went right out the window with a kiss. Those lips! Nice and round and with such good color for a pale boy. She rolled her eyes at the irony again, looking at the light gray skin of her arm. Well, he was pale. Most boys like that had no visible upper lip at all or barely any, just a pale pink line above the middle of their lower lip. Ugh. But he had two full dark lips, so distinct against his very fair skin. Really really good lips , for any boy, lips that kissed so well, but those questions were everything. Everything! To put them aside for a boy's lips, even with the bonus of a full torso grope of him? No, have to be stronger before facing that boy again, no matter how warm and alluring he is. Next time, no matter what, we discuss those things! We'll get down to the nitty gritty.

She thought more of the kissing, or really just before it, all his talk that she didn't belong in jail that he was stunned that he couldn't put a villain in jail and the word "beautiful". That's what he'd said, wasn't it. Beautiful. And this boy was not a player. She remembered his hexworthy sister on the phone. A girl calling for . . him! He wasn't going around talking like that to every girl he met. She sighed recalling him say it and the look on his face. What girl wouldn't want that, wouldn't want to be with him knowing he'd give her words like that, words said that way? A boy feeling like that, kissing like that, was like a narcotic for a girl. Boysmack. The way he looked at her out of the tops of his eyes while kissing her hand! She caught her breath.

She'd wait five days. She'd be a woman, a strong woman.

Damn, it was hard.

Time seemed to creep along. More than once she looked at the phone nearly deciding to call him to chat. But she held off. She finished a book she'd been reading. She started and finished another. And she went to another book store and bought the things he'd recommended on their second date, a collection of stories by Chekhov and Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville. Chekhov was surprisingly good, not that slightly dense style some of the other russian authors had. She particularly liked The Black Monk. She'd have to ask him about that one. Better non-conformist and possibly crazy or healthy and "normal" but not brilliant.

She bought the papers while she was there. Mostly because they all seemed to feature a picture of him. There he was in the same photo in both City papers and the smaller one devoted to just one suburban town. She read the captions. It seemed he'd stopped some carjacker and the guy had run from him. She chuckled. Brilliant! Run . . from . . Kid Flash? You fricking moron. You should go to jail for stupidity. And Kid Flash knocked him out at the entrance to some strip mall ballet school studio. There they were around him, two dozen or so ballerinas and a couple boys, too. The boys looked up proudly at him. Trying to latch onto any accomplishment by a boy in tights, huh? Half the ballerinas looked like they'd developed instantaneous crushes on him. Well, good for him to get some positive pub.

She also bought a few other books while she was there. Jinx had money. And it came from the most surprising source. She was in a convenience store on Thursday evening. In front of her was a woman in her late fifties or early 60's holding up the line of 5 customers with her stupid dithering about which lottery scratch ticket to buy.

"I'll take a-uh . . a-uh . . a-a number 26 ticket and a-uh . . a-uh"

Jinx rolled her eyes and took a deep breath trying to tamp down the impulse to fry this woman on the spot. Do these idiots think that one of the cards is gonna call out to them or something, heralding the presence of a million dollar winner just waiting to be scratched? Over here stupid gambler, pick me! No, over here! Ugh. Soooo inconsiderate of the other people in line.

"-a-uh . . a-uh . . "

"The number thirteen ticket!" said Jinx with an air of certainty just wanting to end the process.

"You really think so?" said the woman to the weird punk rocker looking girl behind her in line.

"That's the one." Jinx proclaimed.

"Okay" the woman smiled and ordered that one from the clerk. "If it wins I'll give you a dollar" the woman said. Jinx nodded her thanks while thinking "If there were a god in heaven it would give you carpal tunnel syndrome so bad that you can't buy another".

Jinx paid for the items her cousin's friend had asked her to get and was leaving when the old woman came bounding back into the store.

"You were right! You were right!" she said waving the garishly colored little card at her. "A hundred dollar winner!".

The clerk had dealt with the other customers and with no line in front of them, the woman made a beeline for the counter. She presented the winning ticket, received payment, gave Jinx a dollar and started the process again.

"a-uh . . a-uh . . " she only snapped out of it when she saw Jinx about to walk out.

"What're you doing?" she asked with urgency.

"Um, I'm walking out of the store"

"But you can't! You gotta use that lucky dollar on the same thing"

Jinx rolled her eyes. "Fine! Give me a number 13 card" she said slapping the dollar down on the counter. The clerk took the dollar and gave her the card which she promptly put in the bag with her other things and walked out. She didn't even think of it again till she was back at the apartment and realized there was something in the bag as she was throwing it away.

Oh, the scratch ticket. With a roll of her eyes and a wry smile, she took a quarter and scratched off the gray stuff covering the numbers underneath. There. That's done with. She reached to throw it into the trash. Wait a minute. She looked at it. How can this be? She looked to either side of her and then all around the room. Is this some kind of joke? It was a winner. Seven 7's. It was a winner. What the hell? She held it out in front of herself like a potentially dangerous alien object. She let it drop to the table and stared at it. Seven 7's. It was worth . . $500. She squinted in confusion. This isn't supposed to happen. Nothing like this ever happens. What the f . . ? Am I being punk'd by Gizmo or something?

She marched back out to the convenience store, another sneaking suspicion filling her head. I know. This is going to make me be in the right place to meet bigger bad luck, a car crash or stray bullet or something. Because this can't happen.

But her walk to and from the convenience store was completely uneventful. Her fake ID worked like a charm, too. Of course I'm eighteen. The clerk said that $500 was the most money they were allowed to pay out from the store. Any more and the winner had to go to the lottery office. He peeled off twenty five twenty dollar bills and she was gone. Nothing happened. It was this money that Jinx had on her when she bought books from the book store.

Wanting a break from her books, she went online using her cousin's friend's crappy computer. She checked out a few writer's sites that she liked, fanfiction and a couple others. She loved sites like that for promoting writing by giving anyone anywhere an outlet for their writing, a chance to get feedback. She'd submitted a few stories herself and would have confessed that she loved the praise she'd received. She was about to log off the aol account when, out of idle curiosity she thought to run a search on him. To her surprise, it turned up not just a lot of references to news stories but also all sorts of other things. Kid Flash saves this person. Kid Flash stops this robbery. Kid Flash fights Captain Cold. Kid Flash fights Gorilla Grodd. Rumors that Kid Flash stopped aHIVE robbery of museum. She sighed. And there were also fan sites to click on. What the hell, why not? She clicked on one of them and then a "forums" tab and read a furious argument between two girls both claiming that Kid Flash was really and truly, honest to god, in real life, her boyfriend and saying so in computer shorthand, half the vowels and half the sentence structure gone. Jinx scowled. So annoying. The language is beautiful. Use it fer chrissakes! What, you're so busy composing a requiem or a symphony or something? But, though her reaction was inspired by love of the english language, it was also, in some small way a feeling of possessiveness. Those two ditzy girls both know the other is lying. He's really mine, so why don't both of you just shut the hell up!

For Wally, recalling the events of the previous day after waking on Friday was like lowering a thousand pound weight back down onto himself. He came to consciousness on his side, the covers only half over him and Empress stretched out as if someone had tried to measure the how far she could reach from front paws to back paws in front of him. Wally lay there, indifferent that his mother or sister peeking in from the kitchen would see his muscle tone. He was trying to recall if he'd thought of any way out of his problems. But he couldn't think of any.

Depression, like a black fog, settled over him, melancholy not for what had happened because his life was exactly the same as the day before, but for what hadn't. The down feeling here wasn't the depth of his present circumstance but the heights which he'd just missed. He'd only seen the first floor lobby and the 11th floor lobby of Titans Tower, but what a cool place. Access to my school records? Access to federal investigation video? Holy shit. What resources! And the teammates! Cyborg. Oh man. I could talk to him all the time. I bet he knows Cheng and Vandermeer forward and backward. And the others! I-

He caught himself and sat bolt upright with a groan. "Stop thinking about it, jackass!" he told himself out loud. "Stop thinking about it! You're not gonna be part of the club". Don't call us . .

His mother had heard something from the living room. "Who are you talking to in there? Are you crazy?" He heard his sister out there laughing at him. With a sigh, Wally got up and pulled on his boxers, pants and a t-shirt to make his way to the bathroom. He barely took in the presence of his sister and mother on the couch, his sister making faces at him as he went by. He jumped in the shower wanting to feel clean, wanting to scrub clean and start anew. But made his way back to his room 10 minutes later just a depressed boy glowing more pink.

He decided to patrol. The high of using super speed would be especially helpful about now. But he felt so down, so much less than he had been on waking yesterday morning that he had to take deep breaths and psyche himself up before going out to patrol. When he'd worked up a more suitable level of energy, he strode quickly out his room to the front door. "I'll be back this afternoon" he threw over his shoulder not wanting to talk.

"Where're you going?" his mother demanded.

"I'm checking on some work" he said half turning to her in the doorway.

"Good. I don't want you sitting around doing nothing this summer, eating us out of house and home"

Wally sighed and walked out. He turned the corner down the street and changed into his Kid Flash uniform, sprinting away at super speed from the spot where he usually hid his clothes in the hollow of an oak tree.

Most of the time, patrolling, he had to mildly fight the euphoria of it to not feel like a dumb jock. But this time, Kid Flash just ran and felt the sensations of his muscles, the pleasant warmth of calves and quads and hamstrings and glutes firing away at a pace that only one other person on the planet could match. He was glad that there was no crimes for him to try to stop right away. He still felt sort of beaten down from the result of the interview.

But as he continued to patrol and exercise his great ability, he felt better. He felt stronger. And he started to wonder if there was any reason he wouldn't get mentally tougher as he got older. Why can't I handle more of this? The thought of indifferent teachers and parents, his bratty sister or anything else, even his isolation defeating him didn't seem quite real running around in his Kid Flash uniform. By Sunday he still felt a bit depressed but not so badly as Friday morning. He tried to psyche himself up before their date. She doesn't need to see me feeling depressed, he told himself. She doesn't need to have me putting burdens on her. No way.

He filled his head with thoughts of her beautiful face, those exotic pink eyes and that pink hair, her exquisite hourglass shape. He remembered having his arms around her. He felt all the energy he needed now. And when he saw her on the street corner he was infused with even more.

He tried to kiss her hand when they met but she pulled it from between his. "Not so soon"

"Sorry" he said a little defensively.

They looked at each other for a few moments, both unsure what to say.

"So, I saw the picture in the paper of you at the dance school, the other day"

He shrugged. "That's where I caught the guy. I have to make the most of any opportunity to not be the guy with the tightest outfit in the room."

She smiled at him in his oversized civilian clothes and knit hat. "Okay" she said starting to walk down the street. "Let's get right to it. No kissing till we've discussed some things. You said that our powers influence us more than we realize. Take it from there"

"You wanna start right off with that?"

She nodded very insistently. He sighed,taken off guard by immediately plunging into such a serious topic but gave it his best. "Um, okay, well, I only know for sure about myself and what my power does to me. It makes me feel kind of euphoric. And it makes me always see possibilities because it makes me feel like I'm never out of time. I noticed it within a few months after I became Kid Flash, how it made me feel to use my powers. I-I thought of it at the museum when you said that your powers were only good for doing evil"

"You heard that? I said it under my breath"

"I was paying attention. It-it sounded like your power was doing the opposite to you of what my does to me. Does it?"

"It, well, I mean, um, well, yeah. It-it sort of heightens anger. I get in line somewhere and it goes slow and I can feel the hex power welling up in me. It's not just that it shortens my fuse. It makes me fly off the handle."  
"Sorry"

"Sorry for what?"

"I-I just don't wish for you to be hurt"

"I-I'm not some delicate flower, you know. And I'm not hurt by that part of it. I've actually got it fairly well under control" she said as they reached the entrance of a rather large diner and went inside. Seated at a booth, Wally ordered three meals. Jinx ordered just a bowl of soup and a knish.

"You're really going to eat all that?" she asked when the waiter left them.

He nodded. "Easily. I need fuel for all my running. I still only weigh like 125 or 127. Anyway, you said that time that your powers are only good for evil. Do you mind my asking why you think that?"

"I destroy things. That's my power. I throw hex energy at things or cause them to fall apart. That's all I do is destroy things. You run like comically fast from point A to point B. I make point B fall apart."

"But that could be positive. You can be a hero just destroying things if you destroy the right things"

She sighed. "I've thought so before, too. But it's never worked out. Leaving that aside, for the moment, how do you think that makes me feel, huh?" she asked angrily.

"It-it must make you feel bad. I'm sorry"

She groaned. "Again with the sorries!"

"I-I . . " he barely kept himself from responding by saying 'I'm sorry'.

"Anyway", she said. "I-I don't zoom over the landscape like some people. I flatten the landscape"

Their food came and she marveled for a moment that the slender boy could eat so much as was set before him.

"I flattened my family" she said, her eyes focused on the table top as he looked right at her. "I drove my father away and then my mother. Do you have any idea what that was like?" she asked with a brief glance at a sympathetic Wally West. "Do you have any idea? That's what my power did. I ruined everything around me. I broke every appliance we had. I ruined everything in the house. I made them feel exhausted and like total failures. I ruined things for them. Finally, my father couldn't take it any more and gave up. He left us and my mom didn't really get mad at him. Two and a half years later my mom couldn't take it any more and left me with an aunt. So, when I say that my power is only good for evil, I kind of know what I'm talking about"

He opened his mouth to say "I'm sorry" but realized that would've been a terrible choice and just took her hand in his.

"I-I think I told you that I got my power at 11 years old and change. If I'd gotten it at birth I'm sure I would have made things impossible and fallen into all kinds of bad patterns of behavior that came out of not knowing how to control my power"

"Look, I-" she tried to begin but stopped for rubbing her eyes.

He put one hand to her cheek. She both loved the gesture and disliked feeling as though she needed his sympathy. She pushed his hand away.

"I'm not some charity case orphan or something. I've made my way in the world despite no one being there to help me. I'm not here for anyone to pity" she said and then got up. "I've gotta go"

He was startled and jumped up to head her off from the door.

"Jinx. I don't look down on you. I'm no better. I'm not some goody two shoes looking down on you from on high and giving you pity while secretly enjoying" the difference between us. I'm . . I'm . . " he sighed and looked down. "not loved by my family. I-I have no friends any more, either. The city thinks I'm more trouble than I'm worth, my teachers all disliked me and the-the Teen Titans rejected me"

"They what?"

"I had an interview. They turned me down. Robin hated me on sight." He let out a deep exhale. "Please don't go"

She sniffed with a smile. "I-I'm only going to the bathroom, if that's okay with you"

He chuckled nervously. "Sure"

When she came back they talked some more.

"Circumstances change. Maybe you reacted a certain way to things based on not being able to do better with the hand you were dealt and the way that people treated you. But if you can do better you can't be afraid to question acting the same way as when you had less control"

"You know how much crap I took from other kids back when I was in school? They didn't like me. They tried to make my life miserable because I'm different. And if all those assholes were good, then sign me up for the other side! That was my attitude. And it wasn't just the kids. The parents and teachers . . do-do you think they want a girl like me in their clubs and firms and everything? Do you think they want a girl like me as part of their phony establishment? And then I was getting somewhere on the villain side of things."

"But do you want to give those same jerks a veto power over your life now? Some kids call you names in elementary school and Junior High and other people make you feel like you don't belong and treat you badly and you can't change things now because of them? That's not rebelling against them. That's making them your masters"

"I-I . . " she ran it through her head. Maybe. Maybe. Then the idea of this coming from him struck her and she stared at him. What a weird boy! What a frigging weird boy!

"What makes you . . ? W-why are you like this?" she asked.

"Like . .?"

"How does a 15 year old boy-"

"I'm not actually 15 yet." he admitted looking down. "I'm a few days short. It sounded better than saying 14."

"Why aren't you playing video games and doing stupid shit that other boys do?"

"Look, I'm not necessarily any better than them. I just got slapped in the face by things I've seen as Kid Flash. When I first patrolled alongside Flash, I was just like an appendage of his. It was all kind of unreal. Running along at super speed doesn't add to the gritty reality of things. I was all gee whiz and excitement about the whole deal. I was just an 11 year old kid. Then on one of my first solo patrols, there was a dead man. These crooks killed this young guy just for maybe being a witness. It was the first dead body I'd ever seen and it was horrible."

"Bloody?"

"No. Almost none at all. It was the look in his eyes, the look on his face. I was a afraid to walk in front of those eyes. You almost thought he could still see. What could you say to those eyes? He-he had this look on his face, this incredible look of sorrow and-and longing, like, please don't let it end here. There's so much more left! It was-it was . . "

"Your eyes are watering"

"Jinx. It was the saddest thing in the world and while I was still there, his wife came screaming and sobbing onto the scene and she had their baby boy with her. No more laughter for him. No more jokes. No more sunsets, no more music, no more love, no seeing his boy grow. No more life. Just nothing. Nothing. I was twelve then and that poor dead guy must've pushed me forward two or three years at that instant. The people who would do that . . ? I will never lack for motivation to catch people like that. But you're not one of them"

They just looked at each other and ate for a while. The somberness of his recollection finally dissipated and she was able to joke about all the food he'd eaten. He kissed her hand as he had in the book store and they left the diner and wandered aimlessly till they found themselves in a small park at the edge of an apartment complex. They found their way to a bench there and kissed and necked for over an hour, amour unfettered. Eventually they got up as the sun was starting to set and Kid Flash escorted her back to that same intersection where they'd met up.

"Have you had a girlfriend before?"

He shook his head. "I-I've kissed a couple girls at parties and raves but no, no girlfriend. Well, there is this one girl who sleeps with me all the time but . . " he waited for her reaction. Both eyebrows lifted. Her jaw dropped. ". . but it's our neighbor's cat" he smiled. She slapped his arm and deftly applied a bit of hex energy just as she touched him.

"Ow!" he laughed.

"You deserve it. But I do love cats. If a cat picked you out and chose to sleep on your bed, that's a major point in your favor as far as I'm concerned."

"What about you?"

"No. I-I almost dated Cyborg months back. But it wasn't going to work."

She watched his expression change slightly as he absorbed this.

"Okay"

"But, no, I've never had a serious boyfriend"

"You do now" he whispered then stepped forward and kissed her. They parted with a long meaningful stare that was at least as affectionate as the kiss. She went back to the apartment and he went quickly to an alley where he changed into his Kid Flash uniform to patrol.

Meanwhile, at Titans Tower, Raven was in her quarters illuminated only by the grey light on in one corner. But she wasn't levitating and achieving greater mastery of spells or memorizing new incantations. She was thinking of the monthly meeting to take place the next day. "He always wins. He always has to win. Well, not this time!"


	10. Titans! Convene!

Robin punched away at the speed bag in the Titans Tower fitness center. It was his morning ritual, a two hour workout beginning at 6:30 a.m. Usually he was finishing up at the same time as any of the others were getting up.

He'd go from there to check all the local, state and federal law enforcement communications for any data relevant to open cases. Then, a quick scan of the major papers on line, perhaps some research about weaponry or explosives, potential new birdarang ideas and some notes made on the computer about any open cases.

About this time he'd make his way to the kitchen, his body humming along at peak efficiency, metabolism roaring but pulse under control, breathing light as he encountered a bleary eyed Beast Boy or a shuffling Starfire or exhausted looking Raven. Cyborg seemed to get up better than the others. Maybe because so much of him was machine, just an on/off switch, not the slow rise to alertness of most people. But Cyborg stayed in his quarters till later in the morning most days. Probably doing something with his machine parts. Shudder.

Robin was the Titans. He never said that to the others. He didn't want to rub their faces in it, but that was part of the way he saw himself. None of the others gave to the group the way he did. Sometimes it really annoyed him. Frigging Beast Boy with his childish antics. And Starfire! God! So hot but such an airhead sometimes. Then there was Raven with her constant attitude and her all night meditation sessions and spell casting sessions that she would do whether or not they had a big day of fighting or missions looming ahead of them.

She would probably vote for him, wouldn't she? Some kind of a pity thing or something. Or maybe she wanted to jump carrot top? He shook his head. Oooooo you were too hard on him. He's poor. Oooooo! Well, boo hoo hoo. He got more than anyone could ever ask for and he screws around with it. Frigging pretty boy.

Robin imagined a certain blue eyed face there and over and over he smacked the speed bag with his gloved hands, the glancing blows making the bag ricochet with the stereotypical rhythm heard in boxing gyms. Robin stopped punching and leaped for the heavy bag.

"Yah!" he got all 132 pounds perfectly focused into his kick rocking the bag back and forth almost far enough to come off its hook. "Yah!" He jumped and spun and kicked it again, and then again and then again each time nearly separating it from its connection. He kept delivering blows, making sure to keep his form perfect and the whole force of his body focused like a laser onto the point of impact as preached in jeet kune do, the martial arts regimen synthesized by Bruce Lee and which Robin had adopted and nearly mastered.

He jumped over to the heavy bag and jumped atop it, getting his feet under the supporting chains so that he could do situps suspended against the bag.

"one -unh- two -unh- three . . "

". . -unh- ninetyeight -unh- ninetynine -unh- one hundred!"

Gasping for air but proud, Robin slid his legs out from under the chains above the bag and let himself slide down the side of the bag to the gymnastics mat below. He gathered himself and caught his breath as he walked out to the showers. He stopped for only a moment to glance at himself in profile in a mirror. A slight frown creased his brow and he pressed a palm to his hip. No matter what I do. He sighed and walked on.

I'm just not lucky like some people. Course, not everything falls right into their laps, he thought and smiled at the recollection of how he'd crushed his hand saying goodbye to him. Robin chuckled out loud as he pulled off his workout clothes and stepped into the showers setting the spray for power massage. That probably took out the hamate and pisiform bones of his right hand. No need to be bitter though, thought Robin as the jets of hot water worked their way down his back where he stood. Today'll close out that little episode of a potential mistake. Don't call us . . Robin sighed as the jets of hot water in the front of him started pressing hard against his chest, the tension washing right out of him with the warm kneading sprays.

Raven pondered it over and overthe morning that the Titans convened for their monthly meeting. It wasn't her usual thing this concern for the tiny details of intramural battling. Tapping into the great undercurrents of the universe was so much more worthwhile than trying to be Dogbert rather than Dilbert in the office wars. She tried to think, from her mystic sorceress mindset how to play this. But she was having trouble until she decided to follow the example of the master, Robin himself.

Not only was the black haired boy a master of strategy in a fight. He was the master of strategy in everything. Everything. He could not bear to lose and he could not turn off the competitive push he brought to everything. In most cases, it wasn't a problem with the other Titans. Beast Boy was so much a jokester and so needy for acceptance he just wasn't inclined to stand up to Robin except in the fake conflict of video games. In the combat simulations room, Robin owned him. Starfire was similarly inclined to be polite and cheerful. Only when a certain very distant line was crossed would Starfire really assert herself. Cyborg was another story. He was a good teammate but a self-sufficient personality. He didn't need Robin's approval. And he didn't have an absolute need to win at everything like Robin did, like he sensed Robin did. And she could swear that he'd let Robin win on occasion, once or twice at video games and once in the combat simulations room. There was some part of him that knew what he could do and how he'd fight when it counted and didn't care. Lose half your body and then lose it over getting beaten at grand theft auto 5? Uh uh. He just didn't need to win at some Wednesday night time killing mock fight in the Com Sims room. Let Robin take it.

And this attitude of Robin's even extended to procedural team meetings. Speedy had applied for membership after they'd first met him when he was one of the teen heroes tricked into fighting in a tournament by Master of Games. He obviously had great skills. For whatever reason, Robin didn't want him in the group. Cyborg wanted to champion Speedy's case. Cyborg had been to Robin's left. Robin moved to his left and went first. That was the way they did it. Whoever spoke first at 11 a.m. then to the left around the group. So, everyone else heard Robin's no vote and reasoning before the vote went around the circle. The issue was decided before Cyborg even got to make his case.

They'd agreed that, until they got up to 7 full members, approval of any new members had to be unanimous. If Cyborg had gone first and convinced the others, Robin might've have been in the difficult position of having to say no after everyone else had said yes, not that he wasn't up to that.

But Raven was still angry at how he'd handled Kid Flash's interview. They were the two members there to conduct it, Beast Boy got back to the Tower too late. Cyborg was doing some kind of registers flush, he'd called it, of his own systems. Couldn't wait he said. And Starfire had flown off to see sunspot activity or some such thing, some big treat in the eyes of Tamaranians. O-kay. They'd interviewed other applicants as a pair and had always done it the same way. Master gamesman Robin asked most if not all the questions and Raven judged the sincerity and character of the applicant.

Kid Flash had tried to prepare himself for the interview as well as he could but was completely thrown when he and Robin had the immediate recognition of their mutual antipathy. She sensed great dedication on his part and that he was dealing with great stress. He felt unloved by some in his life and was hurt by that lacking but he loved another. She couldn't tell whom. She hoped her abilities in this regard would increase and she'd be able to do full mind reading. At present, she could sense outlines, general sentiments and qualities of affection. Sometimes something would come into focus. It seemed almost random what it was Sometimes it was a strong memory. At other times a thought on which a person was focusing. Somewhere in the back of Kid Flash's mind was a strong thought of the book Brave New World. He must have just read it or been thinking about it. Awfully serious book for a guy that Robin said was just a cocky hotshot. And he seemed to be quite emotional about it. Hmmm. That was interesting.

But, almost as much as being upset at how Robin had treated the orange haired applicant, Raven simply wanted Robin to lose. It was unhealthy the way he couldn't turn off the urge to compete. His Slade fixation was just the tip of the iceberg. He needed to lose at something and see that losing didn't destroy you, that you could lose and grow from it. And this would be a painless loss, because Kid Flash was an excellent candidate. He was practically a pedigreed superhero, being the next in line to the great Flash tradition of super speed crime fighting. And she thought his point about the great reconnaissance benefit he could give to the team was right. How many times had the Titans taken a punch before they could deliver one because they didn't know what was coming? A teammate scouting out the opposition at mach 10 or faster would certainly help fix that. And he was kind of cute. Well . . she smirked recalling him in his uniform in front of her entering the conference room. Maybe more than kind of.

So, when 11 a.m. Monday had almost arrived and the five teens drifted into the conference room, Raven carefully eyed Robin. And she saw that he, in turn, was carefully eyeing her. Probably going to try the same trick. Sure enough, when he saw that she was to his left, though he'd seemed energetic a moment before, he suddenly forced a yawn and drifted to the back of the room where there was a box of donuts. When he returned, he was now to her left. And, of course, the moment the clock reached 11 he'd speak up and force the debate to start around the circle from him leaving her last. He'd correctly guessed that she'd strongly support Kid Flash.

So, Raven got competitive back. She traveled by spirit form under the floor and then back into the room immediately to Robin's left as she sent a very small bolt of black energy at the clock. The minute hand, which had been about to move from 10:58 to 10:59, moved instead to 11:00 a.m.

"I want to start" said Raven reappearing to Robin's left. The spiky haired informal leader started to sputter a protest but saw that the clock did, indeed, now read 11 a.m. and a few seconds.

"Well, it's time" said Cyborg. "You're first, I guess, Raven"

"Hey, wait! Isn't Robin supposed to go first?" asked Beast Boy.

"No, it just seems that way because he always did" said Raven with a glance at a glowering Robin. "And now that I have the floor, I'd like to advocate the acceptance for full membership of Kid Flash"

"The super fast boy with orange hair, yes?"

"Yeah, Starfire but you don't get to speak till Raven's done." said Cyborg. "That's what we agreed to, so that these things don't become a free for all."

"Well, I think we could use more members with bright hair" she giggled.

"Star!"

"Yes, Cyborg". She nodded

"Allright" continued Raven. "I'm going to vote now. I vote for accepting Kid Flash as a full member. He's got tremendous powers. He has refined his use of them over more than 3 years as a hero. He has a letter of recommendation from the Flash" she said handing out copies to the other 4, Robin last of all, with a smile to match his scowl. "Cyborg worked with him in stopping the attempted theft of Xinothium from Jump city College and can vouch for him. He's got a three plus year record without a single mark on it. He's got a couple statements in his record from police officers who don't like him but I bet all of us do, too. The bottom line is that he's got great powers, a spotless record of using them, excellent references and he really wants to be part of the team. If this boy isn't good enough to join the team then I wonder if there's anyone out there who some of us" she turned to Robin who gritted his teeth at her explicitly calling him out, "-will support for membership."

Next up was Cyborg.

"I also vote for accepting Kid Flash as a full member. Everything that Raven says is true. We could really use a guy who can scout areas out for the team at 10 times the speed of sound. I've gotta say that I'd heard that he was a kind of a cocky hotshot type but he was all business with me and Speedy on that Xinothium case. And he'd done his homework. He knew the half life and some of the rare properties of Xinothium. He was all set to go when he showed up and he did exactly what he was supposed to do. I was impressed. I vote yes to Kid Flash."

After him was Starfire.

"Well, I'm voting for him, too. Not just because he has bright orange hair!" she giggled into one hand. "Though I think we can all agree that that's a very good quality" she smiled. "My teammates Cyborg and Raven have looked into this boy very closely and I trust them. I vote to accept the Flash who is a Kid"

Raven smiled and glanced at Robin. He was furious, nostrils flaring and jaw muscles flexing. He could have bitten through steel at that moment. Starfire was the most easily influenced of the group. Every other time he'd gone first he'd gotten her to vote with him. Next up was Beast Boy.

"Well, I know he had a kind of a rocky interview. I think Robin went way overboard in giving him a hard time. I read through his whole file last night. Yeah, that's right! Me! I read a file. I did some studying. And I just don't see why not. He's got super speed. He seems like a good guy. I don't see that there's any serious mark against him and we need to have more power not less with the way the Brotherhood of Evil's going. I vote to accept Kid Flash"

Robin was doubly furious now. What the hell was going on? Even Beast Boy! He'd stared at him, stared at him really hard . . really really hard. And still he'd voted the other way. What the hell! He knew what that stare meant! Don't cross me, greenie! Since when did he rebel like that? Damn!

They all turned to him now. Five zero in favor of him or a denial by a four to one count, a veto by the boy wonder. They all stared.

"You'll win either way" said Raven. "Your vote will decide it either way. What's good for the team?"

"You're not supposed to speak!" he complained.

"I didn't advocate for him, unless you think asking you to vote for the good of the team is advocating for him"

Robin glared at her. He'd so carefully avoided this in the other votes. It'd been so smooth. The others hadn't even realized how the process had been steered, had they? Might've had to veto Speedy if not for going first that time. They all wanted him.

Don't they see what kind of a hotshot pretty boy this West is? God, that uniform! And the jokes . . jokes! Right in the middle of a fight, joking around, practically posing in that short piece of footage Cyborg was able to rip from the HIVE's security cameras. Okay, he's powerful. The crap he can do! What a lucky bastard! God, if I could run like that! If I could go through walls! I'd be unstoppable if I could do that stuff. Un . . stoppable. Un . . frigging . . stoppable. Instead it goes to Kid Flashy, mr self satisfied! God, where's the justice in the way powers get distributed? I have to scratch and claw for everything, have to accomplish everything by the skin of my teeth and he gets all that and coasts! Where's the justice?

"Robin?" asked Cyborg. "How do you vote?"

Robin sighed in defeat. He limply made a thumbs up sign to the others.

"Boo Yah! Boo Yah! Boo Yah!" exulted Cyborg with a clap of his huge hands. "I'll call and tell him!"

Beast Boy was happy too. Orange and green could work together sometimes. There was going to be a rave in the city next week. He and Kid Flash could go and meet some hot babes. And Kid Flash hadn't heard any of his jokes. None of 'em! Hehehe! He laughed in anticipation of it.

Starfire was happy because Raven and Beast Boy and Cyborg were so happy. And the pictures of this Flash who is a Kid were awfully cute. A boy with eyes like that could crilthorp the steezil off an urfdorn! She laughed at the thought, proud of her cleverness. The steezil off an urfdorn! Haha! She smiled at that and finished with a sigh. Such nice orange hair! But her warm feelings ended abruptly with the sight of the angry exit of teammate Robin from the room with curses under his breath.

Raven chased after him down the hallway.

"The meeting's not over, you know!" He didn't slow.

"You're not going to see the meeting through to the end? We'll just vote for all the foods you don't like . . " she joked as she caught up to him at the elevators. "And we'll let Starfire cook it all . . "

"Why are you following me?" he said with a scowl. "Did you need to gloat?"

The elevator arrived with a 'ding' but Raven threw a hand in front of him. "Look at yourself! You lose a vote, not a fight, just a vote and you stomp off?"

He scowled.

"I thought you were stronger than that. Kid Flash shook your hand and said thank you when he felt you'd completely screwed him out of something he really deserved. Aren't you that strong?"

He started to speak. He let out a deep breath. He grunted. He shook his head back and forth focusing his eyes on nothing in particular. Then, looking down at the floor and not at her, he extended his hand to her. He waited. And waited.

"You won't shake my hand?"

"Robin! You need to offer your hand to him, not me"

He sighed. "Well, I've got a few days to work up to that"

"You'll see. It'll work out fine and maybe he becomes your friend or . . something warm and fuzzy like that"

He sighed more deeply and started back to the conference room with her.

That night, Cyborg pressed the button for speaker mode on the phone in the conference room, Raven, Starfire and Beast Boy were beside him, and dialed the number for the West house. They all wanted to hear his happy reaction to the news.

One ring. Two rings. Three rings.

"Yeah?"

It was a girl's voice, not his. All four of them looked at the phone.

"Um, is Wallace West there?" asked Cyborg.

Wally's sister looked at him lying there horizontally, on the chair and ottoman beside the couch, absolutely asleep, not disturbed in the least by the ringing of the phone six feet away. God! She and her two friends were already laughing and joking about him when it rang. He was just her weirdo brother deathly tired for whatever weirdo reason.

He wasn't Kid Flash after the longest day of patrolling of his life, having patrolled for 4 hours then followed a jet to Steel City then another jet to Seattle then searched the whole airport and surrounding districts there for an hour then sprinted back to Jump City before returning home and sitting in the chair because he literally couldn't take another step for lack of food and rest. I'll just lie here a few seconds and recover before going to my room, he'd last thought before falling into a deep sleep after just seconds.

"What nutjob wants to know?" she giggled with a glance to the other two girls who, at first, were worried that Wally might wake but who now laughed openly.

"Excuse me?"

"If you wanna talk to him you must have a screw loose, unless you're some kind of telemarketer"

"Listen little girl. I don't have a screw loose. I-"

"Then you must be a telemarketer. We're on the do not call list"

-click-

Cyborg looked to the others. What? What was I supposed to do?

"So . . . madness runs in his family" said Raven. "On the bright side, it might be a passive sort of insanity for all we know"

Cyborg tried again. He dialed. One ring. Two rings.

"Yeah?"

"Is Wallace West there?"

"You're not gonna say what telemarketing company you're from?"

"Little girl, I am not a telemarketer"

"So you've got a screw loose"

He sighed. "Little girl, is Wallace West there?". The Titans heard nothing for several moment and then gasping laughing in the background.

"Yo yo!" said the voice on the other end of the line suddenly adopting a rap cadence. "You wanna speak to the gangsta geek?" the voice then descended into gales of laughter as did a couple other voices in the background before-

-click-

"I was wrong" admitted Raven. "Simple madness wouldn't be that annoying"

"Cyborg looked to the others. "It's the number on the form, the same number as I reached him at before. I'm sure of it."

He tried again. One ring. Two rings.

"Yeah" giggled the voice on the other end.

"Would you please pass along this message for me?"

"Shoot"

Cyborg looked at the others beside him in the Tower communications room. Progress at last.

"Tell him that Cy called and told him he's in"

"Right. Saul called and said he's out" the voice giggled slightly.

"No no. Cy called and told him he's in"

"The doctor called and wants to know if he has an innie?"

"No, little girl! Cy called and told him he's in!"

"Jenny Craig called and told him he's too thin?

"That's not what I said, little girl, I-"

-click-

"Damn!" Cyborg slammed his big hand down on the granite table.

"So . . . we can defeat Slade and the HIVE but not Suzy Gumsnap's phone etiquette? Does this feel wrong to anyone else?" asked Raven.

In the West household, Wally's sister and her two friends fell over on the couch laughing. They looked over nervously at Wally still lying horizontal on the chair and ottoman and not stirring. They laughed some more at this. Why's weirdo so tired? One of the friends got up and went over to him and put two fingertips to his neck.

"He's got a pulse"she smirked. They left him alone for a while then giggled and laughed dropping crumpled papers and wrappers from the trash all over him. Still nothing. More laughter. But they didn't know where to go from there. He was left alone after that only for lack of imagination.

His own imagination was getting a workout from dreams of Jinx as he slept a deep, exhausted sleep. He woke in the wee hours of the morning still feeling exhausted and surprised that he had to brush all that stuff off himself. He got a glass of juice from the fridge and went straight to his room, peeled off everything and slid under the covers. He never noticed a purring Empress enter the room and take up a sleeping pose across his neck as he slept on his side.

The only mental activity in Wally at all were the dreams in which he saw Jinx.

But everyone else saw Jinx that night,too, not in dreams, but on all the local news stations and in footage of the daring daylight bank robbery by the HIVE, led, as the CNN anchors noted, by their leader, Jinx.


	11. Lt Kid Flash

Author's note: Thanks again for the kind sentiments. As I said before a previous chapter, I'm as much a praise whore as anyone else. I apologize for the delay in adding this chapter. It took nearly 6 hours of attempting to upload it before it finally took. Thanks Wally woke with a groan and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of his little bed. Down at the end of the bed, Empress had previously climbed off him and taken up a sphinx-like pose at the foot of the bed. Wally gave her a pet down her back. "Good girl, Empress". As with all cats, she raised up on her back legs as he reached her tail. Then just stood up, jumped to the window sill and then out.

He ran one hand over his thigh, chest and shoulder. No lingering soreness, but he brought his hand back down to his lower abs. Damn, am I hungry. He looked at his cracked clock radio as he pulled on a pair of boxers.

"Ten o'clock already!" Jeez. I slept fourteen hours? Fourteen hours? But thinking it over, it didn't seem so ridiculous. He couldn't remember ever doing so much super speed running without a meal before. But to do so much of it for a call from Flash was great. Answering calls from the police was always a bit more of a chore and a duty. But helping Flash out was special. It was a chance to show what he could do to the one person who truly appreciated it. He recalled looking up over his shoulder while sprinting along a highway and seeing that he was easily getting ahead of a jet that Flash said had to be searched when it landed. And thinking about it some more, Wally smiled with pride at the realization that even a year ago he would never have been able to do so much super speeding in one day, even with breaks. No way. I'm a man, a super speeding man. I spell M . . . A . . . N . . . MAN.

He pulled on a pair of his giant pants, a t-shirt and a knit hat and made his way into the kitchen. His younger sister was in the living room with one of her two friends from the previous evening.

"Hey, look, sleeping geeky's finally up! Hahaha"

He scowled but otherwise ignored them and set up a bowl, a gallon of milk and some boxes of cereal. He kept an eye on them and set up his first bowl of cereal. They weren't watching. There was a super fast flurry of spoon activity. Done. He poured more cereal into the empty bowl and added some milk. He cast another glance at them. Not watching. Done. He let out a hearty burp as the two bowls of cereal settled in his stomach. He wolfed down seven more at super speed, having only consumed one as far as his sister and her friend knew. They left and Wally washed up thinking of Jinx.

Shoulda got her phone number! Damn! Too full of warm thoughts about her to think straight. Oh well. She won't want to wait five more days. Heck, she might've tried calling last night but got ditzy answering the phone instead of me.

He pondered, at length, their last date and all their kissing, how she felt in his arms, her arms around him and eventually, it occurred to him that he was not ready if things went even further. Oh crap. I don't have anything, in case we . . . Wally marched right out of the house and down the street, turned left at the intersection, went another quarter mile, all of this at normal speed, a kind of testament to his seriousness that he went the whole way walking like other people, and into the mega pharmacy at the intersection with the 4 lane highway. He walked in and, unsure of where to find them, wandered around a bit before seeing the display off to the side of the razors and shaving cream, other men's products that he'd likewise never used. Only then, standing there in front of the various choices on the shelf did he begin to consider the issue of what was right for him. All the jokes he'd heard in gym class started coming back to him as well as his surprise that other guys weren't nearly as . . . He remembered the juniors hazing him pointing and laughing. "That ain't right".

Okay. He sighed intently scrutinizing the various options. Some of the boxes were all shiny silver and gold, oddly glitzy and this seemed vaguely disreputable to him. Ah, there was the brand he'd always heard about. There's a red box kind annnnd a green box kind. Hmm. He inspected them further. Okay, red is regular and green is the next size up. But, to the other side of green was an empty slot in the display. Is there another kind past the greens? That's what I-

"Can I help you?"

Wally nearly jumped out of his giant pants. Ugh! Being interrupted doing such an embarrassing thing and by an old clerk who seemed positively hostile the way he asked the question.

The man was the pharmacist. He worked in the back of the store and he knew a shoplifter when he saw one. That was half the point of skinny boys like this one wearing giant clothes, wasn't it?

"Um, I was-was wondering. Is there a, uh, I mean there's red then uh, then, uh green of these" said Wally pointing to the boxes in the display but unable to make himself face the clerk while asking this question. "It, uh, it-it goes red then green is-is there one um past the, uh, the, uh the green?"

"You think you need more than the greens" the man stated, not asked.

Wally tried to get a "yes" out but before he could, the man simply grabbed one of the glitzy silver and gold boxes off the shelf and held it practically in Wally's face.

"Here. If these don't do it for you, nothing will"

Wally took the box, displeased at the silly quadruple prefix name he saw on it and, discomfort at the whole process not lessened a bit, muttered a thank you then shuffled toward the cashiers at the front of the store. As he walked, he pressed the box to his shirt and covered as much of it as he could with his hand, passing by two different mothers with young girls on the way. Finally, he reached the front of the store and then the front of the line to the only cashier working. He stepped as close to the counter as he could before putting the box down, trying to hide from view of the other customers what he was buying. So, he was mortified when the clerk passed the box in front of the price code reader and it didn't beep. Nothing happened. She tried again. Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing. Five times. She raised one eyebrow. Hmmph. Then Wally saw her reach for the phone by the register.

Oh no.

"Price check!" the fiftyish woman announced over the speakers to the whole store. "The . . 12 pack of Mega . . Ultra . . Jumbo Maxx XL condoms"

Wally's head dropped to his chest. He closed his eyes in embarrassment. Stupid speedforce doing this to me! He seriously considered vibrating himself invisible and right out of the store. It seemed to take forever for anyone else in the store to respond and all the while he could just feel the other customers staring at him. That skinny boy! While waiting, he glanced over his shoulder once. Both women with daughters were now in line behind him. One had her hands over he daughter's ears. The other was scowling at him furiously. He also saw a man who lived down the street from him with his family of four in a much nicer house. "That fricken West kid" he heard the man sniff to someone else in line. When, finally the clerk who'd handed him the box came to the front and told the cashier the price, Wally didn't care what it was. As long as he had that much money he would have paid it. He nearly ran out of there with his bag and barely controlled the urge to super speed back home. He'd just regained his composure as he reached home and reproached himself for being a superhero but unable to confidently buy these things, when the phone rang.

"Hello, West residence" he answered.

"West residence? Jeez Kid. What are you, the butler?"

"Aunt Iris!"

"How ya doing Kid?"

"Gosh Aunt Iris! Great! But, um, to what do we owe the honor of this call?"

"Formality again, huh? Well, it's like this, Kid. First of all I like you. Second of all, I've been busting my tail for a week now dealing with some scum of the earth politicians and above board crooks, too. And, third, I'm waiting in this airport for a flight and I wanted to talk to somebody clean but your uncle isn't available so I called you"

"Thanks Aunt Iris. I know why he's not available, too. Justice League. I was patrolling all yesterday morning and then helped him out all afternoon and into the evening. I was wiped out"

"A good kind of wiped out I hope"  
"Mmm-hmm"

"So, how're some other things going?"

Wally could almost feel her eyes looking at him through the phone lines, scrutinizing him, weighing the slightest change of expression or posture the way Aunt Iris always did. He knew exactly what she meant.

"She's officially my girlfriend"

"Oh! That's great, Kid! That's just great!"

"Every time we talk, we get closer. And I told you she was on the-the villain side of things-"

"Yeah?"

"Well, not anymore. I don't think she can be categorized that way any more!"

Wally heard his Aunt chuckling on the other end of the line.

"See Kid? Other people like talking to someone clean like you, too"

Wally just smiled bashfully a thousand miles from her.

"And tell me how that job application's gone. Did you have an interview yet?"

Wally paused a few moments. "Yeah, I did Aunt Iris"

She immediately drew all the correct inferences from his glum tone. "They didn't accept you?"

"No, they turned me down. Well, Robin turned me down"

"The boy freaking wonder? Someone called a boy freaking wonder had the nerve to turn you down!"

"It-it was just one of those things, Aunt Iris. He and I just immediately disliked each other"

"Well, then he's a jerk, Batman's little fascist protege! You're not good enough for them! You! Kid, you're good enough for anyone. Anyone. Tell me, tell me exactly what they said to you. Did they give a reason for turning you down? What'd they say?"

"Well, they didn't really say anything. When the-the interview ended, Robin stood up with this little jerk smile and said 'Don't call us, we'll call you'. Only the word 'no' itself says 'no' more than that, right?"

Wally was surprised to hear Aunt Iris cover over the mouthpiece of the phone and he thought he could almost faintly hear swearing, swearing that would put any man to shame. When she came back on, she spoke a mile a minute.

"Well, I've got my next target now, Kid. Robin the boy effing wonder and the Teen effing Titans? Who built that tower, huh? Who pays for everything there, huh? Who pays the tax bills? Whose signature is on the check? Maybe the public would like to know in whose pockets those kids are? I mean, you don't think their benefactors get better treatment from them for giving them that T-shaped palace?"

"Aunt Iris!"

"Two to one it's Wayne Corp through about five levels of holding companies. You wouldn't believe some of the things that outfit does. There were these two companies in Gotham City that hated each other and saw each other as mortal enemies and when you followed the paper trail, you found that Wayne Corp. owned 'em both but thought they produced more hating each other. Bruce Wayne has got more hidden deals going than anyone, Kid. If not for a few charity deals, the public would look at him like just another sleazy Trump type. At least Trump married. Wayne's got no wife but guardianship of a couple boys. How 'bout that? Maybe a few interviews there would turn up some dirt. He-"

"Aunt Iris!"

"He stays out of sight most of the time though, he's not a publicity hog like Trump, and he's probably a better businessman too, but he's got his fingers in a thousand pies that nobody knows about. At least they didn't until I-"

"AUNT IRIS!" After Wally's shout, the line seemed to reverberate with silence. "Aunt Iris. I don't want you to do that."

"What? Why no-"

"I don't want to hurt the group as a whole and especially not the others. I met Cyborg and he seems like a really good guy. Raven was at my interview, too, and I don't have anything against her. I don't want to hurt them. Will you do that for me, Aunt Iris? Don't hurt them."

There was a sigh and then a long pause on the other end of the line. "Just this once Kid, just for you. But, you, uh, didn't ask for me to call off the dogs on the uh boy wonder, now did you?"

"Don't hurt the group, Aunt Iris. Nothing that in any way hurts the group. Please."

"Okay, Kid. But boy wonder is not the group"

"No he's not, Aunt Iris. No he's not. But, it'd be hard to go after him and not hurt the others. Honest Aunt Iris, I'm pretty much over it. It really really hurt for four or five days there but seeing Jinx again and things going so perfectly . . " he didn't finish and just sighed.

"Who, Kid?"

"Jinx, Aunt Iris. That's the name she goes by"

"Uh oh"

"Uh oh, what? What-what's uh oh?"

"Did you see the news last night, Kid?"

"No. I got home and basically passed out from exhaustion just inside the door"

"Kid. I hate to be the one to tell you this but she was in the news yesterday, running with that HIVE group. They took down a bank in broad daylight. It's in the papers today."

"WHAT! No, that's gotta be wrong! I know her, Aunt Iris! That's not her, not any more"

"Kid, I've gotta go. My flight's boarding. But keep your head clear, Kid. Remember everything your uncle taught you. And keep a clear head. Fast as you run, you solve cases with your brains and not your buns, Kid. I gotta go, bye"

"Bye . . Aunt Iris"

Wally hung up and zipped over to the tv. He turned it on and tried to find the news. He got to CNN but they were in commercials. He tried Fox News but they were talking about some european Islamic group that had threatened bombings over a limerick with the name Mohammed in it. Rhyming Koran with whore and? He tried CNN again and after a few minutes more commercials they were back in their usual rotation of stories. He endured a few minutes of stupid hollywood talk and then, there it was.

_Police in Jump City are pursuing leads on a daring daylight bank robbery by the group known as the HIVE Five. This group, which actually has 6 members, stole $2.4 million from the Jump City Bank's vault in a matter of minutes. This footage from the bank's cameras shows their leader, the girl Jinx as well as See-More, Kid Wicked, Mammoth, Billy Numerous and the midget, Gizmo. Police spokeswoman Katherine Doyle says that the concentration of meta-humans in Jump City made a switch to daylight robberies by groups like this almost inevitable._

Wally watched the footage intently. They showed just six seconds of video that moved at a fast pace and seemed jumpy. He slumped back on the couch. The video was in color. There was a pink haired grey skinned girl seeming to lead the others into the area behind the tellers. It was hard to tell with the angle of the camera work, but it looked like Jinx.

_In other news, self appointed anti-war spokesperson Cindy Sheehan was in Havana today, calling the United States the 'great satan of_-

Wally turned the tv off. He lay there staring at the empty dark glass of the screen with his mouth hanging open. His world was crashing down again. No Titans and now no girlfriend. He drew a couple shallow breaths, feeling panicked, before straightening up.

No! It . . No! It can't be. It can't. There's got to be some explanation for this.

"That's not what she is!" he protested out loud. "That's . . not what she is." he muttered. He went to his room and changed to his Kid Flash uniform, intending to sprint out to police headquarters but he stopped there beside his bed. He was replaying, in his head, their last date. In particular, he recalled the look in her eyes when he suggested to her that if she was on the villain side of things as a reaction against jerks who'd mistreated her growing up, and stayed on that side, then she wasn't rebelling against them, she was making them her masters and letting them determine the course of her life. That'd really seemed to hit home. And when they kissed afterward in that park, besides just how fantastic it was to kiss beautiful Jinx, there was an extra charge to it, a feeling like she was saying thank you, thank you for helping to free me from this.

There's no way she would choose to be part of a bank robbery the very next day. No way! She couldn't kiss me, a hero, like that if she was really a villain. That kissing . . that was real! That-that affection was real and it couldn't be there if she was about to rob a bank. It couldn't.

Kid Flash zoomed out of his home and sprinted at top speed toward the intersection where he'd dropped her off twice. In a fraction of a second, the western residential, shopping, downtown and eastern warehouse districts compressed into one short vista. He stopped at the street corner and looked around, oblivious to the stares and gawking and picture taking by the people around him. Then he ran multiple small circles, one and two blocks across all around the surrounding area. But he didn't see her or anything connected to her presence. He did see two police cruisers parked a few blocks from that intersection where he'd dropped her off. They were behind a run down looking building. His curiosity piqued, Kid Flash sprinted up to the third floor apartment where they were and stopped beside a police sergeant who nearly jumped at suddenly seeing the red and yellow clad super teen beside him. They told Kid Flash that they'd had a tip that Jinx might be in the area, might be there. But they were about to clear out. The woman living there denied it and there were no signs at all of the girl having been there. The neighbors were drunks and stoners who couldn't or wouldn't say anything useful either. Kid Flash nodded.

"Oh well, that's the way it goes sometimes" he said as consolation while taking a last look before leaving and noting the remains of a rose, brown petals fallen onto the kitchen table at the center of it and the sketch book wedged into the side of a futon.

Kid Flash sped off. Okay, what does that do for me? I know where she was but she's not there any more. He tried to find something useful to infer from this but drew a blank. He zipped over to a newspaper box near City Hall and pulled some quarters out from under the wrist of his uniform under his glove. He bought a paper and took up a perch on the marble beside the stairway leading up to the main entrance. He stared intently at each picture for minutes and read every word about the robbery three times over at normal speed. All the while people went up and down the steps past him doing double takes at the casual presence of the hyper athletic super teen.

He didn't care. All he could think of was solving this puzzle. It couldn't be what it seemed, what everybody, including the police was assuming it was. But, how? How?How?How? How do I do this? There's gotta be something wrong. There's gotta be something I'm missing. There's gotta be! She can't be . . . It was like a moment of vertigo just sitting there beside the marble steps, to even consider the possibility. He swayed to one side before catching himself. She can't be a villain. She's so wonderful. And she . . she loves me . . . doesn't she? He gradually admitted to himself that that was part of his fear, that she didn't genuinely care for him, that he was just a super athletic body and a nice face to her.

His eyes were watering over now.  
"No!" he said out loud and rose to his feet. No, he repeated to himself. Gonna be a man about this. Gonna be a hero. I'm a fricking hero. If not, I've gotta have a long talk with the tailor about letting out this suit. There's gotta be something else going on with this case. He sped over to police headquarters in a fraction of a second but stopped outside.

What do I say? What do I tell them? How do I make them see my point of view about her?

He sat down on the low wall in front of police headquarters oblivious to the comings and goings of officers, lawyers and crooks, sometimes the categories overlapping, all shooting glances at the sleek, brightly attired super teen. But he didn't notice any of the scene passing in front of him. After asking himself over and over how he would figure out what was really going on, a recollection came to him.

He thought of the day after Christmas when he was 11 years old. He'd had his Kid Flash powers only a couple months. He spent the day with Aunt Iris and her husband, Uncle Barry, the Flash. He remembered the warm fuzzy feel of spending a day at their home, stoking the fire in the fireplace and their questions, over and over about how he was handling being a superhero all of a sudden. And he remembered being squeezed between Flash, in civilian clothes of course, and Aunt Iris underneath a blanket on the couch with the fire to one side and the tv on. And Aunt Iris was hugging him or rubbing his head every minute or so it seemed. He sighed with the pleasure of the recollection. But what came back to him more now was watching those rerun episodes of Columbo beside Flash. Was it two? Or did they watch three in a row? Flash loved Columbo. He said it was great training for Kid Flash and he pointed out all the clever things that Columbo did, all the principles to which Kid Flash needed to pay attention.

"See!" he pointed to the screen as the show went to a commercial. "He's right. We do that all the time. We take in one piece of information and bring aboard a raft of other stuff with it that doesn't necessarily follow"

Kid Flash, in jeans and a sweatshirt with his shoes off and feet up on the couch, knees to his chest, listened with rapt attention, eyes wide open. "uh huh"

"The secretary took the call and heard that man's voice and brought in all the assumptions about where he was but it's not necessarily true. "

"I understand"

"And motives, Wally, motives! Remember in that last one that the guy who killed the rich guy with a block of ice over the head had known about phone tapping by another guy and used it to establish a phony alibi. Why did the guy let it go on, a sharp operator like that? Because he knew he could use it later"

"Yup, I see that, Uncle Barry"

"And inconsistencies are crucial too. When a person does something one way all the time and then does that same thing a different way and a crime is involved, it has to send up red flags, Wally. You have to ask yourself if it was done differently because of the crime. That's what Columbo does. He goes over every assumption and he looks for inconsistencies"

Wally nodded and got a hug from Aunt Iris. "You pay attention to all that Uncle Barry tells you, Kid. You super speed types have to be smart about how you approach things to overcome the way you get all happy running around"

Wally had blushed because he had felt a bit like a dumb jock sometimes after sprinting around in his red and yellow. What the heck was going on inside to feel like that?

He remembered getting a cup of cocoa from Aunt Iris and discussing Columbo some more.

"What would Columbo say about this?" muttered Kid Flash in front of police headquarters. And as desperately as he wanted to solve this riddle for Jinx's sake, he now added onto that a feeling that he ought to figure this out for Flash and Aunt Iris, too, to show them that they'd taught him well. He took a deep breath and sprinted up to the desk of Winston Randolph, the middle aged african american officer who sent out calls from the communications desk to Kid Flash and who told him what each call was about when he came in.

"Winston! Please! Do me this favor. Let me see all the footage from the bank"

"What for?"

"I-I know that girl, that Jinx"

"You know her? She is not on the hero side of things, KF"

"Well, she wasn't on the villain side of things either, not the day before yesterday. I talked to her. I talked to her for a long time. I'd heard that she was leaving the bad side of things and then I saw her so I stopped and talked to her. She was really serious about it, Winston, I'm sure she was"

Winston was not supposed to do anything with or for Kid Flash. That's what the new regime ordered. No special favors for meta-humans, even the good ones. But, damn, he'd worked with Kid Flash for 3 years now. Kid was money. They sent out the signal. Bang. Not thirty seconds later, every time, there'd be that whoosh sound coming up the stairway and there in front of him in that sort of spandexy outfit, the boy himself asking what he could do. He was not supposed to do anything for the boy but Kid wasn't dangerous. Damn! Kid was great. He found hoods and chased 'em down before they'd have gotten a car even headed in the general direction of a crime. And he always answered the call. He wondered how much Kid had given up to answer all of 'em. What was he, 15? 16 years old? Did the brass really think it was easy for a boy that age to drop everything and come running a hundred times? And Kid might've saved Winston's nephew that time in the low rent district. Where had all the other police been? Sitting in cars in the mansion district, probably. Kid was the only one there. Freddy still wore the bullet Kid caught in his hand on a necklace.

Winston looked down the hall in both directions. He pushed a disk across the desk.

"That's all we got, KF. They looked at it this morning and right away decided it was her. Are you sure it isn't?"

Kid Flash sighed. "I-I feel 100 sure based on talking to her but that clip I saw on CNN and the way they talked about it . . " he exhaled and shook his head. Winston nodded. In his time he'd seen fathers and mothers swear up and down that their little princess couldn't have done anything like what she'd been charged with. Right up to and through giving them the dna report that proved princess did it. Nobody believed that the person they knew did wrong. They thought that bad was a quality in someone else's kids or friends or spouse. But it wasn't. Hell, even Kid probably had some bad in him somewhere. But it seemed to Winston that Doyle and Brennan ought to be worrying about a whole lot of other people before being scared of Kid. He motioned to a room three doors down.

Kid Flash ambled over and pushed the door open. Inside the darkened room he saw video equipment. He started playing the tape. It was 7 minutes of footage, the HIVE crew entering the bank, well, all but Mammoth, the others dawdling inside a minute waiting for him and then Mammoth entering at which point they seemed to announce that it was a robbery. CNN may have called Jinx their leader but she seemed to be no more the leader than Gizmo or See-More. He watched the footage to the end. Billy Numerous split himself into enough clones to take the wallets and jewelry of everyone in the bank and they all seemed to crack the safe. Jinx even threw a hex at it. The footage was in color, so Kid Flash could see her pink hair, her pale gray skin, her pink eyes and even the pink energy of the hex she projected. He watched it over and over and over for two hours, trying to find something wrong, something that didn't fit that showed it wasn't her. But, the beautiful girl in the slightly grainy footage sure looked like her. He wasn't 100 sure about the identification but he never got to see a closeup of her face. From the odd angles and the distance of the cameras it looked like her. She was tallish, and slender with a nice shape, too. That shape.

He sighed and stopped watching and realized his shoulders had slumped, his whole posture had become defeated sitting there on the edge of a desk. He took a deep breath. She hexed. She hexed, too. God. And then, more trouble. He only heard the last footstep of her approach. There must have been more. Just too distracted.

"Well, what're you up to now, tight pants?"

Kid Flash turned around to see Captain Doyle in her almost police woman's uniform of a navy skirt and coat.

"They're not pants" said Kid Flash turning to face her. "It's a body suit, a-"

"I believe unitard is the word, then, for what you're wearing"

"Yeah, I think that's the term"

"And, just what are you doing, young man?"

"I was reviewing the footage from the bank of the robbery"

"Leaving aside the question of how somebody not entitled to that disk got a hold of it, why would you bother"

He hesitated to tell her. She was already smiling at him as if she knew. God! Can every woman tell if I'm in love with a girl with just a glance? And this'll just reinforce her notion that none of us are good or bad, just financially troublesome.

"I met her. Since you and I last spoke I met her and spoke to her about coming over to the hero side of things. And she was going to"

"Well, she didn't come over very far, did she?"

"Look, I'm not convinced that that was her or if it was that she wasn't being blackmailed to be there"

"Blackmailed? Maybe you think she was hypnotized or-or brainwashed or something, too" she chuckled.

"Captain. I spoke to her and she was completely serious about not being a part of crime again"

"Girls'll say a lot of things to get their arms around a three thousand mile per hour boy with such a handsome face. You think lying only goes one way?"

"I never lied to her and I don't think she ever lied to me. The-the point is that I was the person working to get her away from all that. I can't just ditch her because things look bad"

"Well, loyalty is a good quality. It's nice to see. People don't expect it from the prettiest boy in the pack. Now, let's just put that disk back where it belongs and close up this room".

Kid Flash did as requested following her down the hallway.

"Just one thing" he said, before speeding off. "That's enough of those pretty boy cracks and stuff about my uniform and all that crap. I'm doing something serious here. Spare me the verbal games"

With that, a red and yellow blur whooshed away from her and down the stairwell in a fraction of a second. But he didn't leave the building. He went down to the records desk run by a very pretty, red haired woman in her early thirties, very pretty despite being a bit heavy. Something in the eyes thought Kid Flash.

"Hi, Shirley" he said with a slight smile over the counter.

"Hey, Kid, what's up?"

"I was wondering if you could do me a favor, Shirley"

"Doyle or Brennan around?"

"Don't know about Brennan. Doyle's six floors up"

"Shoot, then"

"Can I get a copy of the list of every call, every reported anything, including moving violations and parking tickets for the last 3 days?"

She didn't say a word but went over to the printer furiously printing away in the corner of the room and separated the sheets on the tractor feed already done from the one being printed and reached into the box below, thumbing past some sheets then stopping and tearing. She walked over to the counter and handed the inch thick stack of sheets to Kid Flash. "That's what was printing. And, oops. Some of the sheets printed bad. I'll just have to do 'em over"

Kid Flash smiled from ear to ear. "Thanks"

"Go away now. I threw those sheets out. And don't show me that smile for long, either, okay. Oedipus's mom thought it was a good deal, too, with her young guy. Go away."

He zoomed away at super speed with his list. He'd wanted it because of another piece of counsel that Flash had given him. A lot of times, Flash told him, crooks do some other minor thing wrong just before or just after a crime and nobody really pays attention to it because they don't realize the two events are related. Anything from a parking ticket near a place they're casing out to a disturbing the peace call for a party to celebrate a heist. Nothing might come of checking them all out, but you've got super speed so why not make use of it.

So, Kid Flash did. He raced around Jump City checking out every single parking ticket issued the last 3 days. He sprinted to the location of every paranoid neighborhood watch call to the police. He went to the location of every drunk and disorderly arrest and asked someone there about Travis and Bob and Curtis and Nolan and Ted. He super sped to the location of every single report of every crime. But nothing had any connection to the HIVE's bank robbery. Nothing had any connection to Jinx.

And the longer he sprinted around the City in vain while having no answer to the visual evidence of Jinx being a criminal, the worse he felt. Never mind solving the case or bringing the HIVE to justice, he needed a reason, a solid reason to believe in her innocence to keep himself from cracking. Emotional certainty was not enough. As the minutes and then hours ticked by he began to feel a bit like one of those crackpot conspiracy theorists. It's not Jinx! It's . . uh . . it's the HIVE on a grassy knoll! It's her evil twin! It's a trick of the cameras. That last one stuck in his head for a bit. So, he zoomed at mach 5 to the Jump City Bank. The Bank was closed and had yellow crime scene tape around it. Walking in with hands clasped behind his back, he presented himself to the security guard and asked him about the girl Jinx who'd been there yesterday. Did she look like the one who'd been in the papers before. He didn't know. A teller who'd been there during the robbery stepped forward and said that it was the same girl. Kid Flash nodded. He asked if they'd ever had any trouble with their cameras. She shrugged. Not that she knew of. Kid Flash thanked her and left.

The battle among his own sentiments was a scary thing to him now. He had lost control of the way he felt about her innocence. His emotional understanding was 100 one way. The facts were the other way. He couldn't just assert what he wanted to be true, what he felt from talking to her, from kissing her and feel that point of view all the way to his bones. There were pictures. There was the teller. As he zoomed along from place to place his mind whirled with terrible thoughts.

He sighed and returned to his printout. He was down to the last sheet now, calls from the day before the robbery. He checked on the location of two burglary calls and a domestic abuse call. He stood outside the apartment where that call had been made, feeling like his eyes might get watery if he got through the list with no progress toward exonerating her.

"What's left to check?" he muttered to himself trying to force a cheerful mood through a cheerful tone of voice. And as he sped off at the top speed his speedforce infused body could go, again, trying to keep his mood up through whatever chemical reaction the use of super speed had in him that made him feel euphoric, he slowly got another shot of stimulant.

Wait! Left to check. Left to check. A picture of Jinx formed in his mind. It was at their third date, in the diner. She was calling for the check. She made the usual motion for that, a writing or signing motion in the air. She did it with her left hand. Jinx is lefthanded. Jinx is lefthanded. Oh my god. Jinx is lefthanded!

Kid Flash arrived at the site of the very last listing, a tanning salon in the middle of a strip mall just outside the warehouse district. He slowed to a halt in the middle of the parking lot and shouted.

"She's lefthanded!" and grinned at this piece of information, because in the first minute of the video that the police had, the other HIVE members had tried to kill time just inside the bank, looking pretty ridiculous in the process, and he thought there might be a moment there of the supposed Jinx pretending to fill out a withdrawal slip, pretending to fill it out writing with her right hand.

The staff at the Tropiskin Tanning Salon weren't sure what to make of the teen superhero who walked in and asked them questions about their call to the police the other night. Were these super types always that happy the owner wondered. Course, a boy who looks like that is pretty likely to be happy, isn't he, she decided.

No, the police hadn't done anything, they told him. Said the alarms must be faulty but there'd never been a false alarm before. Nothing was gone, though, so how could there be a break in?

"Say, why don't you sign up for some rays? Nobody'll look while your mask's off or the rest of your uniform. You're kinda pale, aintcha?"

"Yeah, but it's part of my charm" said Kid Flash. "A teen of the people! I don't get any more sun than the average guy. Less, in fact to judge by how pale I am. Besides, it's a package deal with the orange hair. I'm stuck this way. I'd probably burn anyway"

"Oh no! We can spray your tan on in the mist room, now."

"Thanks anyway" said Kid Flash and he was almost out the door when he overheard another woman, an employee tell the owner "Don't be offering the mist to people just yet. I still don't have all that light gray crap out of it"

Kid Flash was in the process of pushing outward the bell laden glass door. He turned around and came back to them. Gray? Gray crap? The woman explained that they'd tried to use it the morning after the alarms had gone off and all the nozzles stuck. They thought it had been the ditzy part time girl trying to clean 'em. Kid Flash asked to be shown some of this gray crap. The second woman led him to the mist room and showed him the dried stuff she'd gotten out of the nozzles. You have to clean it after every time or it clogs up. She said that the part time girl must've run this cleaning stuff through it and left it there without shooting a rinse through it. Kid Flash sniffed it. It didn't smell like a cleaner. He sniffed the usual tanning spray. It smelled just like that only it was light gray colored. He got the woman to give him some bits of it which he wrapped in the last sheet of the police printout. He seemed really happy now and gave both women a kiss on the cheek to go with his thanks.

He sprinted back to police headquarters to see the video again with Winston.


	12. KF vs HIVE the rematch

Author's note: Thanks again for the kind words.

Meanwhile, a half mile from the tanning salon, in the warehouse district, five figures were huddled in a control booth in a corner of an industrial warehouse once used as a hideout by Slade. Sooooo easily converted, Gizmo had told the others. All the wiring and utilities already in place, stuff nobody but a psycho would have set up. On the screen in front of them was the image of Jinx, standing in the middle of the dimly lit 12 by 12 caged area ringed on all sides by level 4 containment fields of energy. Her arms were crossed and she had a cross expression, too.

"How long do you guys think you can hold me in here? You thought the special handcuffs would hold me, too, didn't you?" she said glancing to some cracked bits of metal on the floor.

"Hey, you were the one who wanted a level 4 containment area" said Gizmo and then he broke into snickers. See-More pressed the button to turn off the sound from the booth into the caged area and slapped the back of Gizmo's head. "Idiot. What'd I tell you about antagonizing her? What's the whole point of this?"

"I know. I know. Get her back with us"

"And how do you think you help that if you act like a little jerk and she thinks about ketchup and mustard being all nice to her?"

"Hehe, well, if she gives me a quickie like she probably gave quickie a quickie, I'd be really nice to her, too! Hehehe!"

See-More slapped him again. Kid Wykkyd shook his head sternly at the little mechanical wizard. He pointed into the containment cell.

"Alright! Alright!" Gizmo whined and retreated to the back of the group.

Billy Numerous advanced to the controls and pressed the button to have Jinx hear him. "Jinx" he began in his slight drawl. "It's already too late to do anything but join us. Listen to this" he said opening up three different newspapers. "The Jump City Times. Quote. Police today are looking for clues as to the whereabouts of the infamous HIVE group led by Jinx after their daring daylight robbery of Jump City Bank. And they've got a picture of you-"

"It's not me"

"But everybody thinks it is and that's good enough"

"Kid Flash doesn't"

"Well, the-the Jump City Tabloid thinks it was. After the usual puhliminaries they say quote, get this, Jump City Police Captain Doyle says they have positively identified all the HIVE members in the bank camera footage including Jinx, See-More, Mammoth, Gizmo, Kid Wykkyd and 37 Billy Numerai . . hey wait? Numerai? That's not how you pluralize me! It's Numerouses! Where's the editor on these things? I-"

See-More pressed the button to turn off the sound then slapped Billy. "You can't even keep your focus when there's only one of you!"

"She must be hungry" grunted Mammoth. "I'm hungry"

"You're always hungry" sighed See-More. "The pizzas are on the way." he added and then turned to Gizmo tapping away at a keyboard on the other side of the booth. "Do you have all that video ready?"

"Yeah yeah yeah, almost there"

See-More went to the controls again. "Jinx. We're gonna show you what all the news programs said about this. You take a look and you see if you'd have any doubts about whether you were involved. They're going to hunt you down the same as us, Jinx. You may as well come back to our side. Their side won't have you"

Jinx didn't say anything. What would the point be? They wouldn't believe it. Wait till he finds out what they did! He'll kill 'em. Especially Gizmo, little brat, shooting me with that tranq dart outside the apartment.

"Watch this, Jinx. First Fox News." said See-More and the screen on the other side of the bars and the nearly transparent energy field came to life showing the video from a bank camera as the news reader recounted how much had been stolen and who the hive members were. See-More stopped the footage with the image of an apparent Jinx filling the screen. "Pretty close likeness, huh?"

Jinx wanted to laugh at the idea but the girl on the screen really did look just like her, at least from that odd bank camera angle and with the degree of clarity to the picture. Jinx looked at her own bare forearm. The fake's skin color was even right. So were her hair and her eyes. Jinx gritted her teeth and kept silent.

"Or, how 'bout this from CNN, Jinx?" said See-More and the screen showed the report that Kid Flash had seen plus the latest report which showed the apparent Jinx throwing a pink energy hex.

"How'd you like that hex, Jinxy?" the voice of Gizmo asked her. "That was my idea. A little bit of a light show and then the vault door I'd already put charges onto off camera gives way. Presto! Real hex!"

See-More went on to show her the evening news reports from all three Jump City tv stations. All showed pretty much the same footage and every airhead anchor ditz announced matter of factly that it had been Jinx leading the group.

"You're part of the group Jinx. Everybody says so and the police say so too"  
"I'll bet Kid Flash doesn't say so"

"Again with him. Nobody's seen him, Jinx. Who knows where he is? He might be home crying into his mountain dew or maybe he's gone with Flash on some justice league thing or something. He hasn't been out looking for you" said See-More and he turned off the sound from the booth. Gizmo snickered at this lie as did Billy Numerous.

"Heck the Jump City weather report shoulda been temps in the 70's with gusts o' red and yellow"chuckled Billy. "He's going nuts out there"

Jinx was silent. See-More's voice came back on. "See Jinx. We want you back and there's no way the goody two shoes people will believe you, is there? What choice do you have?"

"You're forgetting at least one other option" said Jinx. "Why do I have to go with you losers if the goodies won't have me?"

"Come on, you don't want to be alone, Jinx! We're all better off together. And we never wanted you out. You left us for him. Well, that's not gonna work out now but we'll still take you back even though you had a flirtation with their side. You think anybody on that side will have anything to do with you after even a suspicion that you might have actually been with us?"

"You don't know him"

"Come on, Jinx. Snap out of it. He's just a cocky pretty boy, maybe prettier than the others but that's all"

"Ha! You don't know him at all. He's more of a book type than you, See-More!"

See-More made a funny expression at this claim then looked to the others. What next? What should I say? How do I get her off this crush for that guy? But they didn't know. None of them had ever had a serious girlfriend for very long. The thought See-More had put into trying to woo her before she left for him was the most any of them had ever done.

"Tell her we'll play foosball any time she wants" suggested Billy Numerous and then half whispering to See-More "and we'll secretly let her win" he added with a wise nod of the head. See-More buried his face in his hands.

"What's he got that I don't got . . except yellow?" asked Billy looking at his reflection in the glass of a door to a darkened room. He turned and looked at his backside over his shoulder. "Damn pretty boy".

Jinx paced anxiously back and forth in the cage. The irony! The frigging irony! I go through all the anguish to reconsider my whole life to do a 180 on the whole frigging thing, I find a boy who's the real thing and then this shit happens! Aaaarrrggghhh! She pulled at her pink hair. When she calmed down, she turned to one side of the cage and tried one last time, firing her strongest hex at it.

"Break, fricking level four bitch!" she shouted as she focused all her power on the cage, the air thick with the crackle and hiss of the pink energy she projected and its collision with the force field beyond. The bars bent and cracked, bu the bars weren't really the cage. The faintly shimmering yellowish force field was the real cage and it barely fluttered taking her absolute best shot. She sighed and closed her eyes facing upward. The very idea of being a damsel in distress inspired near homicidal anger in her but what choice was there? Please get me out of this, Wally!

Kid Flash zoomed back to police headquarters nearly smiling as he scorched a mach 10 pace through the city streets, vehicles on the highway looking as though they were in park compared to the pace of the sleek teen. He was practically coasting when he zoomed up the six flights of police headquarter stairs in a quarter second to the hero call desk where he hoped to see Winston.

But Winston wasn't there. The door was closed. The red and yellow clad speedster glanced to both sides contemplating a quick, molecules vibrating walk through the wall into Winston's office. But before he could, a voice called out from behind him.

"You again! What're you doing here?"

Damn. It was Doyle. Kid Flash turned around and saw her peering out of an open doorway three doors down.

"I've got some new evidence in the HIVE case and I want to see the video from the bank again"

She stared at him as she started toward him from that office.

"I want to see the video from the bank again, please"

"So, the magic word should get you whatever you want, huh?"

"I didn't say that, but look at this" he said, removing his glove and taking out the dried gray solution that'd been used at the tanning salon. He explained what he'd found out there. Doyle was unimpressed.

"On top of that, I know that Jinx is lefthanded. And I think the fake Jinx in the video does something that shows she's righthanded. Just let me watch the video to confirm it . . please"

Captain Doyle smiled at him, not a friendly smile, more the smile of a predator. "You sure are interested in this girl's case. How do you know she's lefthanded?"

"I went out with her, alright? I went out with her. And I clearly remember her asking a waiter for a check making a writing or signing motion in the air with her left hand. And I think the fake Jinx in the video writes with her right hand"

"So, we should take the word of the most hopelessly compromised witness there is about this girl? What'd I say about the dangers of trusting a boy with a tidal wave of hormones washing over him? And you want us to trust you and let her off the hook?" she finished with a chuckle.

"It's true! If we found her right now we'd be able to confirm that she's lefthanded. I just want the Jump City police to see that she's not part of this"

"Why would anyone bother to fake that?"

"Because they think she's on the fence and they don't want her to leave the villain side of things. They want the police to act just like they're acting. They want her to stay with them. They probably have crushes on her"

"Like you"

Kid Flash groaned.

"How about the slips of paper at the bank? Did you fingerprint them? You could see if somebody with a record and who looks like Jinx was there then see if you can link her to the robbery"

"We don't need you to tell us how to do our jobs. We might not be wearing suits that broadcast that we're superheroes but we do our jobs pretty well"

He mulled his options. "You're right. I apologize"said Kid Flash. He shook hands with Doyle. Then he went downstairs and found Colavito and Strickland and presented his evidence and theories to them.

Kid Flash sprinted out of police headquarters then down to the financial district and up the stairs of the 86 story Jump City Tower, tallest building in the city. He vibrated right through the locked door onto the roof and pressed the face of his ring three times. He pressed it three times again and then a third and a fourth time. Three tones at a time was the Flash to Flash call. Maybe Flash is back from that Justice League case. But he waited thirty seconds for a response and there was nothing. Damn. That would've been the best, to bust in on those jerks with Flash.

Okay. Another option. Even if I'm not good enough for them. He sighed and sprinted down the stairwell, out into the street and down to water's edge then right past some guys languidly fishing onto the water. He sprinted across the water of the bay to the island of Titans Tower. He pressed the buzzer at the locked doorand waited, reminding himself to be civil if it should be Robin who answers. No response. He pressed the button again. He waited thirty seconds and then a recorded version of Robin's voice informed him that no one could answer at the moment and to please wait or try again later.

Wait! I can't wait! They could be hurting her right now for all I know. He could not help considering the implications of this thought and flinched at the possibilities, the HIVE trying to break her or brainwash her. Just the idea of their hurting beautiful Jinx! Those jerks bringing her pain! Her! Oh my god! Kid Flash's eyes narrowed. His nostrils flared, his chest heaved with deep breaths and he found himself grinding the gloved fist of his right hand into the gloved palm of his left. If they've harmed one pink hair on her head . . He left the murderous intent unspoken as no words would match his fury.

Faster than if shot from a gun, the incensed super teen burst from the spot where he stood, sprinting across the water of the bay to the waterside streets and then through the center of the city to the edge of the warehouse district just outside the Tropiskin Tanning Salon.

"CalmdownCalmdownCalmdown" he told himself, remembering Flash's injunction to "let emotion fuel you but not direct you". Think. Think. Think. Plenty of other tanning salons in the city and probably some without alarm systems, too. Why use this one to fake your Jinx's skin if not because it's convenient? What else would point to them being in the area? Hmm. Five guys, one the size of Mammoth, in a possibly makeshift hideout. Pizza. Kid Flash burst from the spot and quickly crisscrossed the city streets in the area locating every pizza place in delivery range. Have you had any unusually large orders on an ongoing basis? At the fifth one, a Domino's on a busy corner, the guy behind the counter got his boss for Kid Flash and the boss told him of crazy orders from an address in the warehouse district that he'd thought was an empty steel mill or something. They'd delivered 17 pizzas there each day the last week. Kid Flash thanked them and worked his way out through the crowd. A table of teenage girls looked him up and down, giggling and smirking all the while.

"Are you taken?" said one girl about his age with a suggestive tilt of her head when he was stopped beside their table by a slow moving crowd. He nodded. "That's what this is all about" he said, and then the crowd parted and he burst from the store leaving only a red and yellow trail of blur behind himself.

He super sped to a small hill overlooking the address to which the Domino's had been delivering and then to another hill on the other side of it. It was a gigantic building worked into the side of a hill. More than 300 feet long and at least a hundred fifty wide. Whatever sign naming the company that'd built it had been torn off enough years back that the area that'd been under the sign was no almost as aged as the rest of the building.

Hmm. There's something interesting, he noted looking at a corner of the building. An old residential style electric meter. He zoomed to the corner of the building and glanced around carefully. The disk inside the glass casing was spinning away at a crazy rate. So, it's closed down but whatever's inside is drawing massive electric current from the City's grid. Yeah, sure. Happens all the time.

He zipped back to a spot on the hill for just a few more moments of strategy. The teleporter guy didn't seem to have any special ability beyond that. Just gotta catch him at the right spot. Mammoth is mammoth but a thousand of my punches should beat one of his. Billy Numerous? He sighed. An idea occurred to him about how to fight him. See-More? Probably the leader now. He's level headed but aside from a bit of a laser ability, how can he hurt me? Gizmo? He's trouble. What was he working on at HIVE headquarters when I interrupted him? He thought he really had something to use on me. What was it? Damn. All he could recall was a jumble of mechanical parts and circuits on the table in front of him.

Kid Flash took a deep breath and ran straight for the wall of the giant facility. One super speed step from it he started his molecules vibrating and he passed right through the thick masonry wall into the half darkened interior of the building. There was some kind of conveyor belt system running down the middle of the building and giant metal containers, like vats or 4 foot high giant mixing bowls or something lying around in random positions through the rest of it. At the far corner he could see an area curtained off and not far from there a sort of control room with big glass windows looking out onto the building interior. Kid Flash noted all these details in a thousandth of a second as he sprinted from the wall he'd passed through to the interior of the building.

Almost immediately upon his getting inside the building, an alarm sounded. He could see them all near the control room starting to react to it. See-More looked to Gizmo.

"The vibration alarm!" said Gizmo. "Quickie broke in!"

See-More stared anxiously out toward the rest of the building, preparing a laser eye blast for him. He saw a faint red and yellow blur and then, just as that was registering in his head, Kid Flash suddenly materialized right in front of him. See-More fired a laser blast but only one because he was suddenly struck by a horde of red gloved fists as though Kid Flash was a multi-armed hindu god or something. SmackSmackSmackSmackSmackSmackSmackSmack. See-More was out.

Gizmo jumped back toward the control room while this was taking place. Kid Flash lunged for him but hit some kind of invisible wall between them, absorbing some bruises in the process and sliding down to all fours on the cement floor. "Hehe! Guess again, pretty boy!"

Kid Flash made an instantaneous calculation to go for one of the others. Mammoth was advancing toward him as was Kid Wykkyd and Billy Numerous was starting to divide himself. Kid Flash could still see which one had been the first one. He made a ball of some sawdust on the floor and grease from the old conveyor belt and threw a 200 mile per hour pitch at the first Billy, hitting him right in the chest.

"Oooo! That really hurts. You think that'll knock me out?"

"No I don't" said Kid Flash. "I think this will"

He sprinted for the original Billy. He knocked the second Billy out with a running punch and bowled over Billy5. He kept advancing, punching out Billy7 and Billy8, just too fast for them. Now, Billy seemed to see Kid Flash's goal and retreated while frantically creating more Billy's as he went.

"We're not afraid of you!"

"Then why are you running?"

"Just trying to gather the Billy cavalry" shouted Billy. But the cavalry were dropping like flies as a furious Kid Flash punched out one after another with hooks, uppercuts and straight punches all delivered too fast for the Billy's 14 through 25 to cope with. Now the retreating Billy's were in an even darker area by the side wall of the giant facility and on the floor around them they found dozens of thin metal rods, reinforcing bars a half inch thick and 30 inches long. The Billy's all picked up one.

"En garde!" shouted Billy as his clones rushed aggressively toward the onrushing Kid Flash. But Kid Flash picked up a metal bar, too, and defended himself with perfect fencing form, one arm behind him, rapier out front. For a few moments, Kid Flash fenced against a semicircle of Billy's like Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood fighting a bunch of the sheriff's men. But Kid Flash had an advantage over Robin Hood. He could whip his sword through the air ten times as fast as anyone else. Fighting 20 Billy's was almost fair. The resulting sound of the fight was a din of nearly simultaneous impacts as Kid Flash knocked the swords from all their hands one after another and continued to advance toward the original Billy. The Billy's tried to take advantage of his aggressiveness and surround him as he advanced. One Billy got a punch in against his ribs while he was knocking out two others and another got his hands around Kid Flash's waist and tried to wrestle him down so that all the others could jump on him but Kid Flash got free of his grip and leaped forward. The Billy in front of him had a spatter mark on his chest from grease and sawdust. He was just starting to open his mouth to say something as Kid Flash wound up and smacked him with a roundhouse right, then another, then 10 more. The original Billy went down.

"Are you guys going to keep fighting for his mistake?" shouted Kid Flash pointing to the fallen Billy. The suddenly ambivalent Billy's glanced at each other. They shrugged. Hmmm. Now that you put it that way. It was his mistake not mine . . mine .. mine . . mine . . mine . . etc. A couple raised their hands in the air and backed up. "Not my fight" said one, expressing the sentiment of many.

Kid Flash turned to go back toward the other HIVE members and just as he did took a punch from Kid Wykkyd. It wasn't a particularly strong punch but after Kid Flash regained his balance and wanted to smack him, he saw the teleporter vanish into thin air. He sprinted toward the control booth and leaped fist first at Mammoth landed a tremendous blow right on his jaw. The gargantuan simpleton barely flinched. "Yikes" thought Kid Flash. He set about trying to punch Mammoth into submission with as many blows as it took. Mammoth was trying to punch him out at the same time but his blows were easy for Kid Flash to dodge. The blow he didn't dodge came, again, from Kid Wykkyd who teleported to a spot directly behind Kid Flash and stunned him with a punch to the back of the head. While Kid Flash was momentarily stationary, a frantic Mammoth, panicked by his inability to hit the super fast teen and swinging blindly, walloped Kid Flash with a backhand punch sending him flying into the air landing on the fly in one of the four foot high steel mixing vats that dotted the floor of the place. Kid Wykkyd pointed to a nearby sheet of plywood and demonstrated for Mammoth, bringing the open palm of his right hand down on his cupped left hand.

"I get it" grunted Mammoth and he slammed the plywood down over the top of the steel mixing vat. He picked up the two and started shaking them like he was preparing an industrial sized mixed drink. Something was bouncing around inside, reverberating with the shaking. He shook and shook and shook and started laughing thinking of the punishment he was giving the super fast teen, bouncing him off the steel sides and plywood top. Kid Wykkyd smiled slightly too.

"Wow. He won't be such a pretty boy after ya pour him out of there, will he?" asked the voice over Kid Wykkyd's shoulder. Kid Wykkyd turned with a faint smile of agreement and was immediately struck by a dozen punches, the fisted red gloves almost seeming to hit him at the same time. He melted to the floor. Mammoth's eyes went wide at the sight of Kid Flash a few feet away over his shoulder. He peeked inside the steel vat, still expecting to see the red and yellow clad teen. Kid Flash raised an eyebrow and gave a slight shake of his head. With renewed fury from his disappointment, Mammoth threw the vat and plywood at Kid Flash who easily dodged them. Kid Flash circled around and jumped on Mammoth's back giving him a few score punches to the back of the head before Mammoth started to reach back there. He jumped off and zipped around to the front of the giant and smacked him another 40 times on the jaw while Mammoth was still reaching behind his head. Mammoth let out a half shout, half roar of anger at his inability to get hold of Kid Flash and swung both hands forward as quickly as he could. This was Kid Flash's cue to switch again and jump on his back. He was there before Mammoth had even swung his hands forward and he landed another 40 punches to the giant's head. Now Mammoth wobbled. Kid Flash jumped off and zipped to the far end of the facility, never stopping but circling back at top speed straight for Mammoth who barely saw teh red and yellow blur approaching him againwhen the super speed teen leaped and swung and landed his best punch, aided by the momentum of his super speed, right on Mammoth's jaw. The giant's eyes rolled back into his head and he fell over onto the hard floor with a crash.

Kid Flash intentionally walked right over him, enjoying the minor triumph of beating the giant despite having only a fraction of his mass. He approached the control booth at normal walking speed. Not because he was cocky but because he wasn't sure how to attack Gizmo, anyway. He didn't want to run into another invisible force field wall and knock himself out. He reached down and grabbed two handfuls of sawdust from beside some machinery to use, if necessary, to test for the presence of force fields.

"It's just you and me little guy" he said, advancing. "I took out the others and I'll take you out, too. Let Jinx go now and I won't hurt you"

"I'm not some clown like them, Quickie. I've been thinking of this little confrontation since you trashed our headquarters, most of which I built. I owe you pretty boy" he said and Kid Flash could see a faint movement of his arm. He's going for a control! Kid Flash vibrated his molecules a split second before a half dozen tranquilizer darts all passed through the spot where his center of gravity had been, from six different tranq guns rolling on tracks at the corner made by the two story high walls and the sheet metal ceiling. Kid Flash ran back away from the control booth and just a split second after the darts had passed through his position, a couple hundred pounds of oddly colored cement or something like it dropped down on that spot in one ball. The pseudo cement instantly hardened and started to change color. Kid Flash also heard another mechanical action taking place. He could see something spraying out from nozzles at the control booth, mist settling down on the floor around it. Just in case I get close, huh?

Another fusillade of tranq darts all amazingly precise passed through his center of gravity from six different directions pinging away on the hard floor and another 300 pound dollop of pseudo cement squished down on the spot where Kid Flash had stood. It'd scarcely landed when he noticed more of that same mist as had been spread in front of the control booth expanding forth from nozzles near the middle of the building. And he got a whiff of it this time. Cyanocryolate! Super glue!

And another round of tranq darts went flying at him. Because he was remaining solid enough to smell the mist, he decided to try and dodge them. He leaped into the air at super speed, resetting the clock in his own frame of reference to something much slower so that the small black darts seemed to be going very slow. Their pattern was, again, that they all shot right for his center of gravity, just below his navel from different points at the ceiling. His leap carried him over two of the trajectories and he got out of the way of two others with a twist of his hips. The other two barely missed his waist and his ear respectively. Kid Flash thought of the scene in the Matrix of Keanu Reeves dodging bullets.

Too risky. This is ridiculous, he decided. If I try to overcome his gauntlet of challenges it'll be too many things at once. Closed spaces aren't the thing for me. I think I'll just get out of this space, he decided. To his left, was a section of floor running the length of the building covered by steel plates six feet across. Kid Flash could see some space below the plate through a gap between plates. Just as the mist was reaching his position along with a fresh barrage of tranq darts, he vibrated his molecules and dropped into the narrow space below the plate. Just as he hoped, the conveyor belt above had been run by motors below and there was space in the dark there beside the old motors, not much but enough for the slender teen to squeeze by, which he did, at 200 miles an hour, zooming to the end of the building by the control booth.

Gizmo's eyes went wide at the disappearance of Kid Flash.

"Uh-"

A red gloved fist seemed to reach out from the floor beneath him to punch him before he could add the second syllable and then, as he looked up woozily from the floor, the whole red and yellow clad speedster was bent over him brandishing a fist.

"Gimme a reason, you lawn gnome gone bad! Gimme a reason!"

Gizmo flinched and winced and cringed for a few seconds expecting to get hit. He finally relaxed. Kid Flash thought it over and smacked him, knocking him out. Too many things to worry about with this little jerk. What's he got, a dozen pockets in that outfit? Any money he's got a last ditch weapon or a booby trap in half of 'em. No thanks. Sandman for you, you little bastard.

It took a few minutes but Kid Flash was able to figure out how to turn on some lighs and turn off the tranq guns at the ceiling and stop the super glue mists from spraying. He found a control for the instant drying concrete spewer also on the ceiling and used it to spew a walkable path over the super glue floor from the booth to the curtained area at one corner of the building. Next, he saw a lever labeled "L4 Power". He yanked that back to the 'off' position and heard the dying of the deep hum of the level 4 force fields turning off. He ran to the control booth door and threw it open with a shout.

"JINX!"

"Wally!" he heard her shout back from somewhere inside the curtained area. He sped across the concrete path he'd made over the super glue to the thick plastic curtain and pushed it open to get inside. There, in a 12 by 12 cage raised a foot off the surrounding floor with force field generating motors around it, was Jinx. She was wearing her usual goth outfit and her eyes were glowing hot pink, anxious to bash her way out of there. A hex of pink energy flowed forth from her fingertips and the bars off the cage on one side cracked and split and withered to dust in just a few seconds. She walked forward and pushed the remaining metal outward with her dainty hand then stepped down He zipped to her side and took her in his arms. They kissed so long that they transmitted most of what they would have said to each other anyway through the emotional exchange. Most of what remained got across in their joyful, relieved stares at each other that followed. Perhaps the last necessary communication was made when he took her dainty hand, the one that had pushed aside steel it had pulverized, between his two red gloves and kissed it, staring into her eyes over it.

It didn't seem odd to them that they walked out the serpentine hallway path to the main entrance door without saying a word. They occasionally glanced at each other and let out an unavoidable sigh. At the door, she pressed two fingers to the skin over his ribs where a hole had been torn in his uniform. Her expression was the question. He shrugged a response of its insignificance then pushed the door open and they stepped outside into the dusk.

They were immediately hit by police searchlight.

"Titans! Go!" Kid Flash heard shouted and threw the blinding glare saw the feet of all five Teen Titans running at them. What the hell? He waved his arms. "Hold on! Hold on! She's on our side" he shouted. He was surprised that this frantic message worked so perfectly and that no one threw a punch or birdarang.

"You're lucky it was one of us with you" said Raven to Jinx.

"I try and always carry a hero with me wherever I go" quippedJinx. "They come in awful handy"

"Not just a hero" Cyborg told her. "He's a titan"

"What! What happened to 'don't call us, we'll call you'" Kid Flash demanded of Robin standing toe to toe with the boy wonder.

"We called you" said Beast Boy. "At least we tried to. Do you have a little sister who acts obnoxious on the phone?"

Kid Flash sighed. "Not just on the phone"

"We called you last night after the vote that morning" said Cyborg, "But she wouldn't put you on the line and obviously didn't pass along the message. You're in" he grinned.

Kid Flash's gaze swung back and forth looking at each of the Titans in turn. "I . . I'm . . in? I'm in? Really?"

"Yes. We now have orange hair in our group" chirped Starfire.

Kid Flash looked to Jinx and she hugged him about the shoulders. "Congratulations" she whispered. "I know how much you wanted this"

"But she's not" said Robin bursting the mood. "She's wanted for armed robbery of the Jump City Bank"

"She didn't do that" explained Kid Flash. "The HIVE got a lookalike who dyed her hair pink and wore pink contacts and got an instant tan spray of Jinx's color instead of coppertone"

"They faked the hexes, too" added Jinx. "When they had me in the cage Gizmo explained how. Some kind of hologram thing she had under her sleeve"

"They broke into Tropiskin Tanning Salon to-"

"Tropiskin?" muttered Raven.

Kid Flash shrugged. "At the corner of Monroe and Bolivar, not far from here. They set off the alarms on the way out but the police didn't take it seriously because nothing'd been stolen. But I got a sample of the gray stuff they used instead of the usual tan mix and brought it to police headquarters there. You'll also notice on the bank's video that the girl pretends like she's filling out a withdrawal slip writing with her right hand but Jinx is lefthanded"

Robin turned to Cyborg.

"I've seen her writing, Rob. She's a lefty"

"Why did they do all that?" asked Robin.

"Because they wanted to try and force her to go back to being a villain, to being with them. They hoped that people would jump to conclusions on the basis of the bank's video and that Jinx would be wanted forever more by the police,that she'd be forced to be a villain and hopefully go back to being one of them." explained Kid Flash. "Daylight robbery with no effort to stop the filming isn't really their M.O. They just did it to try and get Jinx back."

Captain Brennan came forth from the surrounding cordon of police cars now.

"You'll vouch for her being lefthanded, too?" he asked Cyborg.

"He already told you that?" asked an annoyed Cyborg.

"Well, we weren't sure he wasn't just trying to help her out no matter what the truth was"

"He's a Titan!" declared Cyborg and he shook his head in disgust.

Brennan backed off and took a call over his walkie talkie. After a little back and forth with the other side of the line. He approached the group of heroes again.

"Uh, officers Colavito and Strickland just arrested a girl named Cindy Marcuse. It seems Miss Marcuse's fingerprints were on a withdrawal slip showing that she was in the bank at the time of the robbery and she was found in her apartment with half her skin still, um, like that" he said pointing to Jinx.

"She's uh, she's free to go" said Brennan which inspired an immediate kiss between Kid Flash and Jinx. They rubbed noses after that, finally interrupted by Robin.

"What about the HIVE?" he asked.

"They're all in there" he said "I knocked all of 'em out and Gizmo's defense system was spraying tranq darts all over the place. Check on him first. The others should be way way out"

Robinran past them into the warehouse and he could be heard shouting "Oh jeez!"

"Oh", said Kid Flash to the others. "There's super glue all over the floors. Watch out"

An hour later, with the HIVE all rounded up and loaded into their special level 4 paddywagon and Robin resigned to the loss of his shoes, Kid Flash approached the about to depart Titans.

"What do I do next?"

"Come to the Tower at 11 am tomorrow. We'll start the process"

He nodded and waved goodbye for now with one arm around Jinx.


	13. Matriculation

When the Titans took off for the Tower, Jinx wanted to kiss Wally, but almost the moment the Titans left, the news vans of all three Jump City tv stations rolled up to the warehouse site. Jinx instinctively scowled at them. They'd encouraged people to turn her in when she really was a villain and had painted her as being one when she no longer was. But Kid Flash could see the use in them at the moment. They could get out the word about her. He took her hand and led her forward toward them remaining half in front of her from the time they approached till the lights turned off and they went away. He surprised her with how deftly he dealt with them. Once all three stations had their lights on and cameras rolling, he gave a quick 10 second statement that they'd apprehended the HIVE and that it was now proven that Jinx had not been with them, and that she was innocent. He did this with his hands clasped casually behind his back and in a calm, even tone, completely in command. The questions they asked were sooooo dumb. Ugh! Jinx marveled that he remained patient throughout it all. They were so impolite, the topper being a question at the very end of the last interview. "We're hearing that you and Jinx are an item, Kid Flash. Is that true?"

"I won't comment in public about the personal lives of others or myself, thank you."

Damn! Soooo smooth. She smirked. Frigging 14 and they can't touch him. As the impromptu press conference was breaking up, she asked him where he learned to do that. He told her that he'd gotten a lot of coaching from Flash and had watched how Flash had handled those jackals. "And I think I've done about 50 of those" he told her. "You start to get good at saying things in 10 words or less and at always projecting a calm tone. At first, when I was no good at it, I was just a kid and they thought it was a cute novelty, a boy that age being a hero, so they were easy on me."

She smiled. She smiled at him the whole walk to her apartment, her cousin's friend's apartment. They walked at normal speed, a mile through the City and only spoke a few words. She asked him if he been the only one who'd trusted in her innocence. He nodded. She asked if he'd had some doubt himself. "I knew, um, emotionally, that you were innocent, but the video . . that fake hex looked so real" he said softly. She could tell from his voice how it had scared him. She squeezed his gloved hand tighter as they walked along.

At the door to the apartment, he stopped her. "I want you to know that I was here. The cops were here with a warrant searching but they didn't find anything that proved you'd been here"

"But you knew?"

He nodded. "I saw the rose on the table and I saw your sketch book wedged into the couch, the futon . . . I didn't look at it"

They went inside and immediately started kissing, first against the refrigerator then, without plan, shifting embrace by embrace to the futon where they were locked in a seated kiss, side by side. Jinx saw their reflection in a mirror and thought of a statue she really liked, Rodin's statue of seated lovers kissing. But a minute later the kissing stopped when the door to the apartment squeaked open and a spiky haired girl and skinny artist type guy stopped just inside. The intrusion on the kissing pair was only part of the awkwardness. The boyfriend nearly freaked out that a famous superhero and a villain were in his girlfriend's apartment. Two people like-like . . that right there! And he was nearly freaked in part because they weren't staying within the expected boundaries of their categories. He'd just wrapped his mind around the identities of the two of them there on the futon when he realized that they'd had their arms around each other. Her hand had been on his scarlet covered butt. One of his hands had been invisible beneath the dark, lace fabric at her bust.

Jinx knew how tenuous her stay at the apartment was and quickly ushered her red and yellow boyfriend out the door past them. Mr. Artsy gawked at them as they went past but a total blowup and demand that Jinx's temporary landlord evict her had been avoided. They made their way to the street outside, kissed some more there and rubbed noses.

"Go on home and enjoy yourself tomorrow, Wally."she whispered. "None of that denying yourself crap. The whole martyr, taking on any burden deal with being a hero is soooo unappealing. Enjoy yourself"

He smiled, wondering why they couldn't go somewhere else. That would be enjoyable. He started to argue. "Why don't-" but was interrupted by the plaintive wails of police and ambulance sirens in the distance. He looked over his shoulder, torn. "I . . ". The sirens seemed to be growing in number. He sighed and looked her in the eye. You know I have to go. She nodded. He took her hand between his and kissed it looking her in the eyes as he did. "I'll call you here around 5 o'clock, tomorrow. I'll-I'll think of you. Goodbye" She waved goodbye to a red and yellow blur that disappeared in a split second in the direction of the sirens. She sighed. They don't deserve him.

A couple hours later, a very tired Kid Flash was finally speeding for home. He wanted to just vibrate through the wall into his tiny bedroom then fall into bed but he could see lights still on in the house. He circled through the bedroom at high speed, slowing only enough to pick up his civilian clothes and then through the other wall and back to his usual changing spot in a small wooded area up the street. He pushed through the creaky front door a minute later in his giant pants and shirt and knit hat and sneakers. As he did, he heard his mother speaking to his father in a hectoring tone.

". . maybe if you were around a little more the boy wouldn't be running wild, huh?"

"We're not going to have that argument again, are we? Wait, I think I heard him come in"

Damn! So now I'm . . running wild? He sighed. I spend hours helping search two city blocks for survivors of that gas main explosion and fire and running them to Jump City General but I'm running wild. He sighed. What if I just told them? Hey, look. This is the real me. Kid Flash. I'm Kid Flash. All the times you didn't know where I was I was out trying to catch crooks and to protect people. He hadn't given the notion serious consideration in months. But if home would be Titans Tower why not tell them before leaving?

His father, five eleven and dark haired with a stocky, muscular build, came down the stairs with his usual heavy steps. Wally decided to just be casual and walked slowly toward the bathroom. His father hurried there to intercept him and caught him with a tug under Wally's left arm.

"Look what the cat dragged in" he said lifting Wally partly off the ground and spinning him around.

"Ow!" Wally yelped and pushed his hand away. "It's nice to see you too, Dad. I missed you too"

"Don't smart mouth me"

"I'm just gonna wash up, if you don't mind"

"No" his father said with a tug at the waist of a turning Wally's pants, yanking him back to stand toe to toe with him.

"Hey!"

"I don't know why we ever let you get these ridiculous clothes but right now we're gonna discuss a few things. For instance, slick. You obviously got away from the police . . " he said with a knowing smile and watched Wally for reaction. Wally was perplexed. Slick? Got away from the police? Wha . . ?

"But you didn't help this Lauren Davies girl get away, did you?"

"What? What in the world are you talking about? Lauren Davies? She hasn't spoken to me for months"

"You didn't make secret plans with her against the wishes of her parents to go to that Cantwell party that the police broke up?"

"What? What in the world are you talking about? I went to help out my girlfriend Jinny. That's where I've been all day"  
"You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure"

"You weren't maybe selling or just giving some little gifts to Lauren Davies?"

"What is this insane thing for Lauren Davies. I told you I haven't spoken to her since, like, 3 months ago. What-"

"Well, we got a call from Mr. and Mrs. Davies. It seems that they found all the different things you sold her" he said and faced his son with a forced smirk, waiting for the confession. But there was none forthcoming. Wally was totally bewildered.

"Come on, fess up. We'll find it eventually."

"Find what?"

His father let out an angry grunt and to Wally's shock, grabbed his wrists and held them tight together behind his back before pushing him along across the living room and then kitchen, ending by slamming Wally's shoulder into the frame of the door to his room. Any thought of sharing his secret was gone now as Wally was painfully pressed against the wall.

"That freaking hurts!" grunted Wally which was apparently translated through this dad's son/angry father berlitz language guide book as "push harder!" because that's what his father did.

"Tell us where you hid the stuff and this'll be over quicker"

"What're you talking about?" Wally demanded and, with the side of his face pressed to the door frame he could see inside his little room, the converted breezeway to a garage that no longer existed. It looked like his clothes and books had all been thrown in the air at once, or perhaps a dozen times with no regard for where anything landed.

His father pressed his shoulder into the middle of Wally's back now and growled into his ear from an inch away. "Lauren Davies had a half dozen joints, a bottle of ecstasy pills and some crystals of something her parents didn't even know what it was, to snort or cook or what. And she got it from you. You been dealing ever since you switched to these hood clothes haven't you?"

"What! You're crazy!" shouted Wally and he used his speed, not a lot, just enough to wriggle his wrists free and spin loose from being pressed against the wall so that he stood facing his father amid the seeming wreckage of his room. His father looked at him in amazement that he was able to get free like that. He advanced on Wally again, until Wally raised both hands in defense.

"I'm not some defenseless little boy, dad."

His father stopped.

"And I'm not some drug dealer or something."

"Well, that's what the Davies said. They said they found their daughter's drugs and she admitted that she got 'em from you. Then, your mother and I had to listen to the Davies shout about how you're a little fucking lowlife and how they want your little lowlife ass as far from her as possible and that she said she was going to see you as she ran out of their house. That was ten o'clock. A few minutes ago, they called from the police station. How do you think your mother and I like taking calls like that, being yelled at because our son's turned into a little hood"

"Dad! I am not a hood! I'm-I'm the farthest thing from a little fucking hood! For god's sake, I haven't done a single thing wrong and yet you're ready to toss me into the trash because somebody you don't even know says so"

"Well, why would they say so, why would their daughter say it was you if it wasn't?"

"Christ, I don't know! I'm probably convenient is all. He dresses funny, like a hood. Let's frame him. Other idiots will believe it too! And maybe she's still mad at me for standing her up the one time we had a date. So, she gets cornered by her parents and throws all the blame at me and protects her real connection"

"If you're lying to me!"

Wally sighed. "Dad! What've I ever done wrong that you should accept people saying stuff like that about me?"

"Well, there was that letter from the school"

"What letter?"

"From the vice principal. He said you were mouthing off to all the teachers and riling up all the other kids on purpose the last day of school. He said you'd better straighten out or you'll be in big trouble in high school. He's gonna be vice principal at the high school next year"

Wally shook his head. "I'm-I'm not even going to their public high school. I'm going to go to a private school."

"We're not gonna pay for you to go to private school. We've got a lot better uses for money than that, so you can just walk your skinny ass to the public high school for the next-"

"Dad! It'll be on scholarship. Everything on scholarship. I-I took a test and I won a full scholarship. Everything!"

"Everything?"

He watched his father's facial expression and body language completely change. Imminent attack changed to relaxation . . contentment . . grudging respect.

"So, all your weirdness, reading all these weirdo books, the industrial trade crap and all, actually paid off?"

"Yeah, Dad, all my weirdness paid off" Sigh. Wally waited. Congratulations? A question? A word, maybe just an expression of concern or perhaps simple curiosity? What school? What kind of school? How is that one right for you, son?

Nope. None of it. With the news that he wouldn't be costing any more money, all his father's interest in Wally was gone. His father muttered something more along the lines of "just so long as it's all scholarship . . " and walked slowly away to the stairs and then on up. Wally pushed the door of his little room closed and used his super speed to pick everything up and put it away in its place, books, pants, underwear, shirts, socks, sheets, pillow, his little league trophies, his model cars and planes. It was all a heap of debris on the floor and then a second later all of it was back in its place. The bindings of some of the books had been ruined, though, and he could only guess that his father had seen the small hole in the side of the twin bed mattress and thought, Aha! Because the hole had been tripled in size in a futile search for hidden drugs.

Everything back in place in his soon to be vacated room, Wally looked outside his room and seeing no one, zipped to the bathroom. He took a 10 second shower, rinse in four and a half, lather head to toe in one and rinse again, then made his way back to his room at normal speed. He could hear his sister complaining to his mother. "Why should HE get to go to private school instead of me?". The tone of her voice was pure whine. Wally couldn't help but laugh. Way to go sis. Don't fall short of my expectations of you. Finally, he pulled off all his clothes and slipped under the covers. How can I leave all this behind?

At 10:50 a.m. the next morning, Kid Flash sprinted across the bay to the island and to the Titans Tower entrance grinning ear to ear. Cyborg's voice answered his push of the doorbell.

"Come on up, KF! Fourteenth floor!"

Kid Flash sprinted up the stairs so fast that he was standing beside Cyborg before his hand was even off the button for the intercom. There were handshakes and congratulations all around, grins and excitement and even a noticeably reserved Robin smiled some. The mood was of triumph, of happiness for a deserved reward being given. And, with the exception of Robin, the others clearly enjoyed his elation.

Kid Flash was embarrassed to admit to Jinx that night what a blur the day had been. Something was a blur to you! She got a good laugh out of that. But there were a hundred new things to remember, what was where who did what, how to find this, where to put that, and he was so excited about everything. So excited. He didn't stop grinning. He really did try and let it all soak in and enjoy it like Jinx had suggested. It made it all the more difficult to keep it all straight. It was a whole new life to which he was being introduced.

First, they asked what to call him. "Kid Flash" seemed faintly demeaning, said Raven. He suggested they do as Cyborg and previously Speedy had done and call him "KF". KF it was and with that out of the way, Cyborg had him fill out some forms with background info. Starfire mussed Kid Flash's hair as he was writing in Aunt Iris's contact information on a table in the kitchen area but he didn't mind. He grinned back at her and continued filling out the forms. He was pleasantly surprised to find that he'd be paid a stipend to be a Titan. "You'll . . pay me to do this? Seriously?" They all nodded and he laughed out loud. I get to live with my peers and be paid for it! Ahahahahaha! How much? Cyborg pointed to the number on his registration form.

"I'm rich!" he crowed.

"Dude? Our monthly makes you rich? You're at least one decimal point off"

"Compared to the money I was making mowing lawns and stuff? Yeah, that's rich"

Then, they got him registered with all the security systems. They had him speak a whole series of words into a special microphone to register his vocal patterns in the computer. He also had to stare into a special retinal scanner for a minute. After that, he placed both palms over a special scanner that recorded the print patterns of all 10 fingers and his hands. Cyborg explained to him that various locks and security points within the building might require one or more of these identifications from a Titan and wouldn't open otherwise.

When that was done, Robin seemed as though he would take over the shepherding of the new guy from Cyborg. He led Kid Flash to the elevators.

"Pool, tennis, basketball and helipad are on the roof" he said pointing to the top button labeled "R". "Great Room, kitchen, dining and command center on 14" he said pointing to the next highest button and continued on down the line like a waiter trying to impress diners by reeling off the available salad dressings too fast. "Individual quarters on 13, Computer stations and library on 12, conference rooms, lobby and more work stations on 11, fitness center on 10, weaponry development and refinement on 8, video center on 7, small kitchen and backup communications and computers on 6, paper copies of records and other storage on 5 and 4, private storage on 3 and main entrance, history and tributes to heroes on 1 and 2. B is basement level which is more mechanical. CS, that's sub basement, that's the combat simulations room. It was too big to be inside the building."

"You left out 9"

"That's where we're going. Infirmary, for your physical"

"My physical? But-"

"And your drug test. They'll be administered by doctors from S.T.A.R. Labs. They do that sort of stuff for us"

Ding. The elevator opened onto a small lobby in which two doctors in white lab coats carrying clipboards stood waiting. One was a woman in her early 30's and quite pretty. The other was a dark haired guy, six feet tall, in his mid 20's at most. Kid Flash walked out of the elevator toward him. Robin stayed in and pressed to go back up.

"Come back up to 14 when you're done" he said and smiled at the female doctor pulling on a latex glove with a loud rubbery snapping sound.

Even the indignities of the physical didn't dim the luster of this day for Kid Flash. They poked and prodded and tapped him and stared at him. They spoke to each other as if he wasn't there, the woman, the senior of the two, hectoring the other doctor to notice this or that about the "metahuman". Ugh. That word over and over. It wasn't all bad, they sent him through a full body MRI that took only 10 seconds. Their computer immediately spit out some results and they told him that, based on the condition of his bones the computer estimated that he would grow to a little over six foot one. Kid Flash grinned. Six one was just fine. That done with, there was another round of poking and prodding and looking in his ears and nose and mouth. Kid Flash just stared at a spot on the wall opposite him, especially when they looked . . there. They let him just pull his uniform down to his waist for most of the physical. But then they made him take it off. And there was that pause. That very long pause, very very long pause. They finally did the last few tests. No fun. They were about to let him zoom back up to the 14th floor when they remembered the drug test. They handed him a plastic container with a snap on top, but when Kid Flash tried to pee, he couldn't. He explained that he'd gone just before leaving home. They gave him a glass of water and, as the male doctor watched over his shoulder, the water left him just as quickly as it entered. Hmm. They decided that the test sample might not be that accurate and asked for a blood sample, too. Kid Flash agreed and soon as the needle was out of him, his skin had sealed over and the mark was gone. As they noted that, he said goodbye and sprinted back up to 14.

It was lunch time now. They all sought allies for their favorites. Cyborg offered him three different kinds of waffles. Beast Boy suggested a big tofurkey sandwich. Starfire had cooked a casserole of . . well, it couldn't be that. But itlooked like mustard and noodles and anchovies. To the surprise of all three, and Robin and Raven, he said yes . . to all three. To their amazement their slender new teammate ate as many waffles as Cyborg, wolfed down a tofurkey sandwich and then a plate of Star's casserole. Even though it wasjust what it looked like. Raven looked at him with deep suspicion. "Are you using some super speed trick to hide all of it in a doggie bag under the table?" she asked.

"Nope. It's a Flash thing. I eat a lot. A lot more than it would seem a guy my size should. It still doesn't match out calorie-wise. I mean, if I run a thousand miles. I still don't eat even a fraction of the calories it should take for me to do that. But I eat a lot. Nine meals a days is usually about right."

"How much do you weigh?" asked Raven a skeptical eyebrow about to knock off her hood.

"A hundred twenty seven, they just told me"

She nodded. Just what every girl wants, a boy who literally can't eat too much and never gains a pound. Nope, no psychological pressure there! But after lunch, when Beast Boy and Cyborg were showing him their various video games, it turned out that he'd never played any of them and didn't have any of his own. He said he was interested but that he was more a reader and asked about the library that Robin had mentioned. Raven sighed. A huge appetite's really not so bad.

After showing him some more of the 14th floor, features, they talked about how he could work his talents into the group. Robin suggested that they'd practice having Kid Flash do recon for the group. And Kid Flash suggested that if Gar just changes into something really small, he can travel at super speed with him. He explained that traveling above a certain speed with someone hanging onto him wasn't possible, that friction affected others but not him. If Gar becomes some tiny salamander or something and squeezed under his mask by his temple, he could go super speed with him and the Titans would be able to drop a T-Rex on the bad guys almost instantaneously. Beast Boy was excited. The new guy's trying to make the most of my powers! Kewl!

They gave KF his communicator and explained how to use it, though KF showed them that the wings by his ears weren't just ornamental. The left side one played police frequencies and the right side one had a couple functions including the ability to record. The circuits were tiny, done for Flash by the Atom, he thought. He discussed with Cyborg the possibility of integrating the Titans communicator functions into his ear wings so that he could continue to not have to carry anything with him.

After a while, the discussion broke up and KF got a tour of the whole facility from Cyborg. He took Wally to his new room. Wally was stunned. It was as big as the ground floor of the West home. And the bed! A king size platform bed with the new memory foam mattress. No more twin bed with a mattress the same age as him. His room was between Raven's on one side and Beast Boy's on the other. Wally sniffed. "Hey, is that . . brimstone?" he asked Cyborg. "Like I said, Raven to this side. Okay, let me show you a few more things" he said and reached for what looked like a dimmer switch next to the light switch just inside the door. He pressed the button a few times and each successive time the dark navy glass wall behind the bed got lighter and lighter till finally it was clear glass and KF could see out over the ocean. "Pretty cool, huh? Just a little electric current into that special glass makes it lighter."

"Great! I'll be able to see the sunset from here"

"If you want. Robin's over on the other side of the building because he wanted the sunrise to help him get up early"

"Well, I'm uh I'm not an early riser type"  
Cyborg chuckled. "Nobody here is except for Robin. Here, let me show you something else" he added and walked over to a small rectangular panel in the wall that KF would have missed if not pointed out to him. With just a touch from Cyborg, the two foot wide, six inch high panel extended straight out from the wall to reveal a DVD player, CD player and an ipod station. Cyborg explained each in turn, pointing to the panel opposite the bed and how it was a tv screen and how many songs could be downloaded from an ipod or vice versa using the storage of the "entertainment station" as he called it.

"I don't have an ipod or anything like that" KF admitted sheepishly.

"We've got a whole box full of 'em upstairs" said Cyborg. "We saved Steve Jobs from a kidnapping a while back. He didn't want to give us a thing, or even say thanks, which is all we really ever ask for. Copped a snobby attitude, complained that we were matting down his special grass. But some assistant of his gave 'em to us"

Cyborg stopped in the hallway just outside the room and opened a double doored closet. He removed a clear plastic bag from it and tossed it to KF. "Five . . nine maybe? Medium, I think". KF looked at it. It was a thick bathrobe, white with two interlocking T's, the Teen Titans symbol. "How 'bout some jammies, too?" he said and tossed another clear plastic bag with navy blue pajamas, again with the TT logo, to Wally. "I don't really wear these, but maybe I'll give it a shot"

Cyborg showed him the fitness center and awed KF with what he could bench press. Wally laughed and did the most he could, 160 pounds but Cyborg was very complimentary that Wally could bench more than his weight. He showed Wally how to use all the other machines. He was all pointers on proper form, not once mocking how comparatively weak Wally was. Wally took the opportunity going from machine to machine to ask him about Starfire. "What's with the way she's constantly running her hands through my hair. I mean, I like friendly and I like tactile and all, but she's run her hands through my hair like 5 times already"

Cyborg laughed. "She said that orange hair is the ultimate sign of desirability on Tamaran".

"Well, I'm spoken for"

"We know. Robin's not too cool with it. I think Raven's got her reservations. But I think it's pretty cool that you stuck by her."

Wally nodded his thanks. Cyborg was clearly the Titan with whom he had the closest immediate bond.

Cyborg showed Wally the Tower library, where the different sections were, classics, fiction, poetry, spells and witchcraft. "Guess who takes those out?" History, sciences, technology.

"Oh my god! Cheng and Vandermeer!" KF grabbed it off the shelf.

"You're interested in Cheng and Vandermeer?" chuckled Cyborg.

KF nodded. "I couldn't afford it, though. They wanted 57 bucks at Borders and I didn't have 57 bucks"

"Are you a techie type?  
"I don't know that I'd say that but I want to know more. It's a really cool book. The stuff on the different circuitry solutions to the same problem was fantastic. The two different cell phone systems and the pluses and minuses of each? That was great."

Cyborg chuckled and then punched at the air. "Boo yah! Somebody to talk to about circuits. Yes!"

Wally laughed. "Well, I'm just learning but I want to know all I can"

"Anything is appreciated" said Cyborg. "I can't keep hearing about tofu and birdarangs. I just can't!"

They eventually made their way back up to the others on the 14th floor and Beast Boy, Raven and Starfire had great news for him. They were already going to have a party to celebrate his joining the team but had noticed that he was just a couple days from his 15th birthday, so they'd decided to hold it on his birthday and make it a combined party. KF was nearly floored. For me? Seriously? He explained to them that he hadn't had a birthday party since he was a little boy, maybe since he was 5 or 6 years old. They told him that he could invite his family and whomever else he wanted. But Kid Flash explained that he couldn't invite his family. They didn't know who he was. The others were shocked. And just the raising of the issue brought to mind a problem that he'd wondered about before forgetting it in the excitement of the day.

"Um, how do I do this without my parents finding out?"

"KF! Don't they already know?" asked Cyborg.

KF shook his head. "I have an aunt who knows but nobody else does"

"That must be very lonely to not be able to share your feelings about your crime fighting" said a distressed Starfire. She patted his orange haired head.

KF nodded. "It's a big part of why I wanted to be part of the team. It's probably part of why I enjoy being with Jinx"

"You told her who you are?" frowned Raven.

"She'd never hurt me"

"You have to be more careful than that!" she cautioned him.

"Perhaps he knows how to handle his emotions better than you, Raven" said Starfire again running one hand through his orange hair. KF flashed a bashful smile at her.

"Well, we did work out a plan to officially have a Titan going to Jump City Academy but to really be here at the Tower. But we've never had to use it. Why not just tell them?" suggested Cyborg. "They're probably completely confused about why you seem to be gone so often without explanation and all that"

"Actually, it doesn't seem to bother them at all" said Kid Flash looking at his boots.

"But, it'll be so liberating!" said Beast Boy. "Look at me. I get to walk around as myself with no probs. It's great"

Kid Flash shook his head. "I-I don't think so. I talked about this with Flash a few times. If my secret identity ever got out, my family would be targets for all the souped up whackjobs out there as a way to get at me. I . . I can't"

"Well, then just tell them, dude, but make them promise to keep quiet about who you are" said Gar

"Um, would you trust my little sister to keep the secret of my identity if you were me?" said KF.

The other Titans glanced at each other. Oh . . yeah . . her.

"Jump City Academy it is!" said Raven.

"You're JCA material, dude!"

"An orange haired schoolboy is not such a bad thing at all"

"I bet you'll be the only JCA boy reading Cheng and Vandermeer on the side."

Kid Flash filled out paper work and worked out the details with the others. Through the Titans' affiliation with Wayne Enterprises, the three corporations removed, actual owner of Jump City Academy, Wally West would be listed on the student roster in the computer and his calls would be routed to his room at the Tower but he would never have to show up for any classes. But, looking at the class list, Wally thought there was a history course and a science course he might like to take next semester. Cyborg said that JCA occasionally had some kids from area schools taking classes by special agreement, so nobody would know that Wally West was on the books as a full timer and not an auditor from Jump City High or someplace. And then he smirked. Kid Flash looked around. What? "Robin's going to take the same two courses" said Cyborg. "You two can go together".

Kewl! thought Kid Flash, his present euphoria overriding even their previous antipathy. And with the mention of Robin, another thought came to him. When they were all done, he sped down to the 13th floor, where all the individual quarters were. He remembered what Cyborg had said and first found his room then sped around the hallway to the opposite side.

Inside, Robin was stretching. His legs felt a little tight from all the sitting around at the computer that he'd done that morning, checking databases on the name "Wallace West". Nothing. Nothing they didn't already have in the file. Robin shook his head and did another ballet barre style stretch. The others didn't need to see this, even if Garth FitzRoy wasn't around. God, those two! At least he wasn't like them. But still! The way Star couldn't keep her hands off him! It's just odd colored hair for god's sake! And Raven! Robin switched legs and brought his other foot to chest level and stretched to reach it in a nice ballet exercise rhythm like his acrobat family had taught him. Raven was worse. She never touched him, but the way she looked at him! Those little peeks around behind him. Who was she fooling? Maybe an ulterior motive for championing his membership, Rae? Hmm? It's nice that a boy will want to use the library!. Yeah, right. Like Cy doesn't use the library. And I guess you were looking for the bestseller list on his buns, huh? Oh, am I almost around behind you? So sorry. I'll just have to practically drool on your butt. Robin shook his head. What's happening to the team? That's what Robin was wondering when he heard a knock on his door.

There was no immediate answer to his knock so Kid Flash tried again. He knocked on the dark navy door a second time and smiled when it opened just a sliver. Robin stared out irritably, in full uniform and sighed.

"Just use the intercom, for god's sake. You don't have to go to my door to speak to me. What is it?"

"Sorry. I forgot how to dial your room so many things to keep track of today. I-"

"Any phone, intercom or communicator. Star then R. Your room'll be star K. Beast Boy is star B-"

"I-I get it. But, um, you remember during the interview, how I said that I should take some martial arts training? Well, I was wondering if, uh, if you'd teach me. Cyborg says you're terrific. How 'bout it?"

Robin regarded him through a skeptical squint. Hmmph. Teach pretty boy. God! That uniform! Maybe we'll see just how bad he wants to learn jeet kune do.

"Robin?"

"Yeah. I'll teach you. Tomorrow morning at 9 in the Com Sims room"

Kid Flash started to say thanks but the door shut in his face. He raised an eyebrow at that but zipped back up to the great room. He called Aunt Iris's number and got voice mail. "Guess where I'm calling you from, Aunt Iris? Titans Tower, that's where! And why am I calling from there? Because I'm a Titan now, Aunt Iris! I'm a Titan! Thanks for all your help in getting to this point. I'll-I'll call you from here tomorrow. Bye" and said goodbye to the others with handshakes all around and thanks for all their help. He waved to them from the door to the stairs and then a second later from the other side of the bay. With the light just right, he thought he could almost make out their figures in the windows at the top floor. He waved with his whole arm and then sped off at super speed to the apartment where Jinx was staying.


	14. Love

Kid Flash sprinted from the park overlooking the bay and Titans Tower to the spot off the road just up the street from his house where he'd left a set of civilian clothes. He scooped them up and ran his top speed, longest stride with fastest turnover, through the city to an alley near the apartment where she was staying. He changed in a tiny fraction of a second, and then with his red and yellow uniform safely back inside his ring he shuffled over to her apartment. He knew it wasn't true, but he almost felt taller as he walked to the apartment door. The whole process that day had given him such confidence. He almost felt a positive momentum to his life.

It was just a minute past five when he knocked on the door. Jinx came toward it looking over her shoulder at the phone she expected to ring, almost seeming to warn it to hold off. Her expression blossomed into a smile when she saw through the glass that it was him. She opened the door and he stepped forward into a kiss, taking her in his arms.

"How'd it go?" she asked when theyseparated.

"It was great. It was-sigh-oh god, it was great. What a terrific life they have in there!"

"Your life now, too"

He grinned.

"So, don't just stand there. Fill me in"

He let go of her and launched into a full recounting of what was done and seen and said.

"I knew you'd get along with Cyborg better than the others" she chuckled. "I knew it"

"Why?"

"You're the same type of guy. Beast Boy's not as serious as you two and Robin takes it over a cliff into uptight canyon. Starfire's a ditz and Raven's too negative for you"

"They were all really kind to me. Even Robin was sort of neutral"

"So, where do you go from here?"

"Well, tomorrow I'll move over whatever of my stuff I'm going to move from home and the day after tomorrow's my birthday. There's going to be a joint birthday and new guy joining party. I was, um, hoping you'd attend". He took her in his arms again and rubbed the end of his nose on hers. "Please"

She nodded with a grin. "If I have to"

"So what do you want to do? It should be your choice. I got what I wanted today"

"Wellll. I was thinking. You've been to my place . . " she gestured around. "Such as it is. So I thought I should see your place before you completely leave it behind-"

"Such as it is" he chuckled. "Sure, but you have to be Jinny, not Jinx. I'm only Wally there, not Kid Flash"

"Wally's cool" she said patting his side. They kissed some more but she knew what she wanted and after a few more tastes of his lips she pulled apart from him and then fixed her hair up and put it under a hat, not a simple knit job like his but a sort of whimsical black number that hid all her pink hair from view. She added a dark jacket and started for the door, leading him out to the street.

"How do you want to get there?" he asked at the curb.

"Where do you live?"

"36 Owens. It's out in the Jump Ridge district"

"Hmm. For whatever reason, I don't feel like super speed. I want to kind of take our time and talk". And there it was, right on cue, slowness incarnate, the Jump City bus system! A bus rumbled to the curb right beside them. Jinx had her hand raised. She looked at the front of it. "This one'll take us to the edge of Jump Ridge" she said. Wally got on with her. He let out all his displeasure in one moment, leaning forward and to the side to be speaking almost into her lap.

"I'm the fastest boy alive and . . I'm . . taking . . the . . bus."

She giggled. But he uttered not a word more of complaint. They talked about all sorts of things. The bus went by some kind of odd church, neither was sure what denomination, and a huge guy in a dark monk's outfit was out front of it with a bunch of other people. Jinx remembered The Black Monk by Chekhov.

"Hey, I read some of those Chekhov stories you recommended. They were pretty good, especially that Black Monk one."

He gave a little smile of satisfaction. "So, what do you think of Kovrin? Was he nuts or did they screw him up by trying to make him normal?"

"They screwed him up, of course. I mean, you think so too, don't you?"

"Uh huh. But I guess that some people read it the other way"

"How could anybody read it that way?"

"I'm just telling you what a book at the library said, that a fair number of people read it as this nut being roped back to sensible behavior."

"But that's what he really is! That's what Kovrin is. He's a burn out fast guy and they quote save him unquote by turning him into a weaselly nobody. It'd be like making you normal speed because there's too much risk of you're getting hurt fighting crime and stuff."

"That was one of my nightmares once, that Slade and some villains take away my speed and they don't even bother to kill me because my life would be so terrible without it."

"Well, Kovrin's life is terrible after they save him. Do me a favor and don't ever save me, not that way, I mean not more than you've already done"

"Okay"

"Anyway, I really liked the story. Good call"

They went by a couple mortgage finance places and a couple banks in a row. He asked how she was set for money. He reiterated that he'd now be getting a stipend. She told him she was set for money in the short term.

"I've won $500 on frigging lottery scratch tickets three times now in the last few days. Three times!"

"Sounds like good luck" he smirked

"It freaks me out. I got one ticket because I was trying to make this stupid old woman stop hemming and hawing and pick one and I said to take a certain one. So, she does and wins and gives me a buck that she insists I use on a ticket, so I do and win five hundred bucks. Then a clerk accidentally put someone's scratch ticket in with my stuff and I won another five hundred. And then right before I got kidnapped by the effing HIVE I was in the store and this woman dropped her stupid scratch ticket and, I guess trying to be like Kid Flash, I try to catch her and give it back to her. But she's hysterical that the punk goth girl must be out to get her or something. I don't know. She practically runs me over trying to get out of the parking lot-"

"You didn't hex her tires or anything?"he smirked.

"No I didn't hex her tires, smartass. I didn't do this" she chuckled and put two fingers to his hip and applied a good dose of hex to him. "Yeow!" he jumped off the bus seat rubbing his butt with one hand as she smiled serenely. "I've been really good about that. I resent the kneejerk guess that I'd fly off the handle"

"I was just joking."

She nodded that she knew. Just so much fun to hex you, she smiled at him. "So, I go back in the store with the ticket and, again, it's a $500 winner. Money is practically dropping out of the sky into my lap without me doing anything dishonest."

"See? You're not bad luck. You're just, I don't know . . entropy, I guess"

"That's the scientific take on it" she seconded.

"I like it a lot better"

"Says the boy who travels at a rate of speed that defies logic. Do you have any idea how you work, I mean how it is that you can do the things you can do?"

"Nope. It's embarrassing to admit but I don't. And I don't know if I'm growing differently because of super speed or what effect, if any, super speed will have on my health long term. I just pull on my suit and run and take it all for granted."

"So, I'm off the hook for not knowing how I work, too. Deal?"

"Deal"

The bus drove on and they joked back and forth about whatever came up, including the cab driver style of driving that their bus driver had, aggressively cutting off other vehicles and causing some other passengers to hold on as if for dear life. Eventually they arrived at the stop nearest to his house. He looked around on the street corner getting his bearings. They were a half mile from the West house. He took her hand and led her the rest of the way. When the house was in sight, he could see that his mother's car was gone as was his father's.

"This is where you live?" asked a skeptical Jinx as they approached the front door of the smallest, crappiest house in view.

"Uh huh. I told you my family doesn't have any money"

"I know. I guess I still always think of the good guys as being rich somehow" He shook his head and led her inside.

"It's me with my girlfriend, Jinny" he half shouted. There was no answer or sound of movement or sound indicating anyone's presence at all. He looked around for any clue eventually finding one post-it, written by his mother, among a forest of them on the refrigerator telling him that she and his sister were at his aunt on his mother's side for the weekend. Jinx meandered over to a table next to the tv in the living room and looked at all the pictures atop it. There must've been around thirty. He was in one.

"This is ridiculous" she said pointing to all of them.

"Oh. Yeah. It doesn't matter."

She picked up the one picture of him. Seven or eight years old standing beside his sister, who looked nothing like him. "What a cute little guy you were!" she cooed but saw that he had no particular interest in the photos or talking about what a cute little guy he'd been and made her way over to his room where he was picking out books to take with him to Titans Tower the next day. She looked in the room from the doorway and laughed. The room was eight by ten. There was a space perhaps two feet wide between the dresser and his bed. And that was where the boy saving the rich people and all their money had been living. She shook her head with a sigh.

"I know. Not impressive" he said. "Oh, let me check on something quick". He super sped upstairs and then back down, one hand holding his pants up as he did, and reported back to Jinx that his father's suitcase was gone which meant he was gone on another sales trip.

She grasped the implications of this without him having to say a word. They had the house to themselves. Neither said a word. She pulled his hat off when he took her in his arms and kissed her and didn't stop there. Nor did he stop at a kiss. There was nothing to stop them now. When Isaac Newton wrote about momentum hundreds of years ago, about things in motion tending to stay in motion, all neat descriptions of the physical universe he left out some things. Non-physical momentum. Because his laws apply in other ways, too. Affection has momentum. Affection has to overcome inertia or have the brakes applied to it otherwise it keeps going. Wally's affection was only picking up speed and heading toward Jinx. Her love was only accelerating and heading toward him. There were no obstacles, no brakes on their desires.

Several hours and much affection, love and lust later, he indulged a short burst of super speed, just 20 feet's worth, to get past the picture window naked from the bathroom back to his room and the sight of her on his bed sighing and rolling onto her side as she squeezed the edge of the mattress. He got in to spoon with her and pulled the covers over them.

So vulnerable and yet so strong, he thought, embracing her. So beautiful and so intelligent, too. Almost a tragedy for her to be pushed into that role. Meant for each other, he sighed hazily to himself as he slid his left leg behind hers, the top of his foot below the sole of hers, front of his calf and thigh against the back of hers, knee fitting behind hers as if designed to. He sighed and pressed one palm to the fullness of her rear. So luscious for the base of such a slender hourglass. So taut. He circled his palm around the enticing flesh and then sighed again. He opened his mouth wide and pressed his teeth to her trapezius muscle at the base of her neck, a proxy for the greater flesh and gently touched his teeth to the skin. With a slow exhale, he pulled her to the rest of him, enjoying the feel of his coarse hairs against her perfect feminine skin and the way their bodies fit together so well. He reached under her neck, under the pillow with his right arm and grasped the back of her hand, intertwining their fingers. He enjoyed the gentle tug her fingers gave in her slightly conscious state and he wrapped his left arm over her, cupping his hand around a perfect, little hemisphere. He sighed his breath onto the back of her neck and she sighed in response. Contentment. They lay that way for minutes then she reached over with her left hand. He knew before it got there. He was mostly awake and could tell that she was mostly asleep but any power of direction from her mind and her hand would be there. He felt her hand gently rubbing one arc of muscle. He felt the hemisphere alive, shifting in his hand and kissed the back of her neck. Her neck was okay. The smell of her skin was like perfume to him and it was so incredibly soft, but her neck was okay. Just not the lips. Those lips and that face. Ahhhh. And that fantastic slender hourglass figure. He sighed. He was almost ready for action now. He pulled back from the small of her back. Okay, stay calm. Stay calm. He drew a long slow breath. Her neck would be okay. So soft and vulnerable yet so strong. Her neck would be okay. It was right there in front of his eyes. He kissed softly. When they touched lips, undressed, only one result was possible. He kissed her neck again as her fingers played over his surface back there. They could still just lie there so happily.

Then she woke. He knew it instantly. It roused him too even though she didn't move a muscle. He could tell. There was something more alive about her in his arms. She took his hand from her breast and pulled it to her mouth and kissed it.

"Such a large hand for that wrist" she whispered and he could hear the smile too. Her other hand pressed much harder against the arc of his left hip. He kissed the back of her neck again and he wished he could see her face. He knew she had a look of delight on it. He knew it. Had to be so. He wanted to see that face. He had to see that smile. He had to. Gently, he leaned forward, around her just as she was also turning toward him. They smiled into each other's eyes and kissed, slowly tugging at each other's lips. Anything but making love was impossible now.

Some time later, she was, again, wrapped in his full embrace from head to toe but awake unlike him. She smirked that he would hold her like this, that a 15 year old boy wanted to spoon like this. So tactile! Maybe it's the family deficit. Nobody holds him so . . Didn't he say he'd been all alone since he became Kid Flash? Only that aunt knowing and only that aunt really caring about him? Runs around saving the city and he can't get basic human affection at home. She sighed softly. The irony. But he got through it to be this, somehow. So, hey . .

She ran her little hand gently over the soft skin surface of his hip with a smile spreading across her face. What an incredible, robust shape. She nearly laughed out loud. She loved the skinny boys, slender boys, wiry, lanky boys. Those were the boys who were the outsiders more than the big and fat ones. Those were her guys. Maybe that'd been part of it with Cyborg. And if a skinny guy could have these! She sighed and recalled one instance of him walking away to the bathroom, that incredible sleek shape and that perfect smooth walk. What candy he is and then for him to be books and hero and you can do better too. Damn! And this! On top of everything, this! She thought of the second time, of him advancing, crouching over her and pushing that thick tangle of orange hair south. Uh uh . . nope, not them either . . keep going . . keep going . . yup, there! Hmmm. DidI really scream like that? He sure got the hang of it fast. But he definitely cheated. He so completely cheated. That was super speed. That . . she pulled her hand from behind him and pressed her palm to the skin below her navel recalling the feeling. That . . with his tongue, that had to be super speed. God! No normal boy could do that like that. She grinned ear to ear. My guy. She bent her head and kissed his hand inches away. And talk about cheating! What about that! She returned her hand to its normal position at his muscular hip. What about that? That was completely cheating, she chuckled to herself recalling looking down into his face, held up by his surprisingly strong arms with their fingers interlocked. What . . what was that? She remembered the warm feeling inside. Never felt that before.

She recalled the smile on his face. It seemed like he'd just realized he could do that. She'd almost wanted to zap him with a hex for that smile, that mischievous smile but, oh god. That'd been incredible. That scream had been even louder or it would have been if not for biting on his hand. He never said that he could vibrate just some of his molecules, just one part. She sighed and it was tinged with a feeling of surrender. Surrender of any sort always felt so completely wrong, so weak girly. But a bit of surrender to him . . well, he'd surrendered too, so it was okay.

He pulled her tight to him again. He seemed to do that every so often and she took the opportunity to more energetically run her fingers over his rear. Then he sighed and moved his hand so that his palm pressed hard against her hip. He relaxed and then pressed again and gently caressed the full shape of her then returned his hand to her breast and in the small of her back she could feel him getting more excited. "Who has a thing for buns?" she grinned into the pillow. But I should be excused. When a boy sprints a thousand miles in a minute or however fast he does it and has the kind of rear that says he just might be able to do something like that . . . well, that should be excused.

For some reason she recalled the woman in the line to get into the costume ball on that first date. She rememberd noticing at one pointthat she'd had an expression like asking for help. Jinx chuckled. The woman had been looking at the back of his Kid Flash uniform. She'd seen his buns. Come on! Those! Just another boy? But she was somewhere in her fifties, probably the back side, and she didn't feel like she could comment about his. Come on, somebody help me. Look at him! Come on! Jinx chuckled.

She lay there comfortably till he shifted a bit and shifted her in the process. She could feel a spring against her side. God! This is the crappiest mattress. How the hell does he sleep on this? She pondered her options and decided to try the alternative. Him. She slowly unwound his left arm and then gently rolled him to his back. There was barely room on the twin bed. Then she slid atop him, being careful for it, ready to go as always it seemed, but she found a comfortable position sort of diagonally across him. He stirred a moment then wrapped both arms around her and exhaled. She pressed her cheek harder to his chest right over his heart as she exhaled and let the breath go deeply. Contentment. This was really good. She was nearly asleep again in this satisfaction when she heard a sound. Then there was another sound as she felt something land on the bed. What the . .? Then she heard the purring, like a continuous motor inside the small, lithe, light brown cat that stepped onto Wally's chest taking up a crouched cat pose right beside Jinx's face and just off his chin. The cat turned her way. Jinx was taken aback. If her eyes hadn't already been green, the sheer animal jealousy would've colored them that way instantaneously. Jinx smirked. Oh god. She wants me off her boy. Now! Jinx smiled and moved her head a little more toward his shoulder.

That's right, he said that the neighbor's abyssinian likes to sleep on top of him. "I was here first! I saw that this was a nice warm boy long before you . . Bitch!" she imagined the cat saying. "And you idiots didn't realize he had super speed. I got it at the first sniff of him after the accident. Top of the food chain my ass!". Jinx gave the cat a pet. Purring stopped. Jinx nearly laughed out loud. Wow, pretty clear who's in favor here. The cat now spread out, lying on his chest so that her back was nearly in Jinx's face. Jinx nearly coughed as the cat began purring again and, to Jinx's surprise, deftly extended one paw to touch Wally's nose. He stirred.

"Empress!". The purring got its loudest and he petted her, looking at Jinx as well as he did. She noticed how he petted her in very specific ways, not just a big hand dragged across her. There was a fingertip to her chin and then behind her whiskers, on the forehead, at the base of each ear then down her back but not on her side followed by one last scratch again at the chin. The purring went on a little more then abruptly stopped as the cat let out a little sigh and seemed to fall instantly asleep.

He looked to Jinx. "Oh god, all the dirty jokes with the word 'pussy' floating through my head right now" hewhispered with a smile. She chuckled and gave him a slight hex jolt to his hip.

"Ow"

"You should have seen the look she gave me when she crouched down on you. He is mine she was saying."

He smiled. "I have been for a few years now. But that's over. Sorry Empress"

"Where's she gonna find another super speed boy?"

"Maybe those two hispanic kids could use a cat?"

"What could you use?"

"Me? Nothing. I have everything"

She chuckled at the notion seeing his meager room and possessions.

"I don't want to be anywhere but here, in this moment"

"I want this to be the map to the future. I don't want this to be . . did you-did you ever hear, on the oldies station, That's the Way I've Always Heard it Should Be? by Carly Simon, great female singer songwriter"

"Um, yeah, I think so" he said, brushing her shoulder with his hand for the pleasing scuff of skin on skin.

"Well, I, I mean, that's what I fear, the stuff she talks about, love falling apart and couples going through the motions. It's so true"

"You're so vain!" he muttered. "You probably think that song is about you. You're so-"

She laughed and slapped the side of his hip and gave a jolt of hex energy in the process.

"Yeow!"

She smiled with delight. Soooo much fun to give him little jolts. Ahhhh.

"Always with the buns!" he chuckled.

"Like you're much different?" she grinned back.

"I spread my attentions out a little more"

"I appreciate attention all over. You only react at one location" she said with a smile.

"I'm a man" he smiled. "Anyway. You can't engineer a whole a whole um . . relationship forward from one moment to guarantee that things don't go bad, can you? All you can do is be sincere. I-"

BRRRIP! BRRRIP! BRRRIP! BRRRIP! BRRRIP!

He reached out and slapped the clock radio on the nightstand by the bed. He turned to look. 8:55. He looked out the window. Sunny blue sky. Shit. It was true. He gently sat up. Rrrroooww! Empress jumped off him then to the window and out. He left Jinx in a seated position then was instantaneously clad in his red and yellow uniform in front of her.

"I'm supposed to be at the Tower at 9 a.m. for something"

"Aaarrrggghhh! What?"

"Um, martial arts lesson from Robin. Can you make your own way back and just lock the door when you leave?"

She nodded. "Another reason to hate Robin" she added.

"Don't hate. I love you" he whispered. They shared an extended kiss and he was gone, just a red and yellow blur that had headed into the wallpaper.


	15. In the Com Sims room

Wally could not have felt less inclined to fight, to hit someone or hurt someone than he did that morning. An evening of making love to sweet Jinx left him still in a totally amorous frame of mind. He'd sprinted across the bay to the island and presented himself at the entrance. He remembered Cyborg's instructions to him and pronounced his name evenly into the square on the wall next to the door.

"Kid Flash"

A small red light on the wall next to the door started to blink and a square in the wall flipped around to reveal a retinal scanner. He stepped in front of it and kept his dazzling blue eye open as the light flashed across it. There was a small bell tone and the door opened as a female voice said "Kid Flash, recognized". He sprinted up the stairs to the 14th floor and caught sight of the clock. A couple minutes to spare. Pffew! Beast Boy passed by on the way to the elevators.

"Hey Gar!" he called out with a grin and then a pat on the shoulder, actually wanting to hug his teammate.

"Hey KF!"

He entered the great room and saw the two female Titans. He bowed to them with a huge smile. "Starfire! . . . Raven!"

Starfire, walking by with a now empty plate ran one hand through his hair. "Teammate K . F" she chirped then giggled before continuing on to the kitchen. Raven stared at him oddly. He couldn't quite place the nature of her expression. Something negative or disappointed in some way.

"You don't seem to have brought much stuff with you to move in"

KF laughed. "No, I'll be doing that later. I'm here for a martial arts lesson from Robin. Is he around?". She looked at him even more oddly. "From Robin? Now?" KF nodded.

"Hey" there was a tap at his shoulder and when he spun around, there was Robin. KF grinned and barely controlled the impulse to give Robin a hug. Robin met his smile wiith a look of grim determination. But Wally simply couldn't think that way. Not today. Not now. He just found out how connected he could be to a girl, how fantastic, on every possible level that connection to her could be. Fight? He wanted to kiss the whole world, to give the whole world a tiny sliver of this incredible feeling, this love. Fight? Hahahahahahaha! Luckily, this was only to be a martial arts lesson. He sort of imagined some Tai Chi and some kicks and talk about chakras and what not, just a get your feet wet first session. Was chakra a karate term? He couldn't remember. It didn't matter. Nothing else mattered. Jinx. Loving Jinx mattered. Beautiful Jinx. Sigh.

Suddenly his thoughts were interrupted. Robin was snapping his fingers in front of his face.

"Hello! Earth to Kid Flash. What the hell's the matter with you?"

"It's-it's nothing. I'll be fine"

Robin spun on his heels toward the elevators and Kid Flash followed. They took the elevator down to the combat simulations or "com sims" room silently the whole way. Kid Flash sighed dreamily and stared absentmindedly at the reflective stainless steel surfaces but really only saw Jinx. Robin ground his teeth and shook his head slowly looking at him with deep mistrust.

What a surprise. Technically on time but not ready, not prepared at all. That frigging uniform. Halfway between any of ours and ballet. He's not even in a day, not a full day and he's already not taking it seriously. Maybe he thinks he'll pose and joke through this. Hmmph. A chance to hit this guy?

"What fighting training did Flash give you?" asked Robin over his shoulder when the door opened and he started out into the hallway.

"Not really any in fighting technique. I think he felt that my greatest weapon was my speed and that I should concentrate on refining my control of my speed and how I used my speed first rather than how I punched or kicked or blocked."

Kid Flash followed Robin down the hall to a set of heavy doors. Robin took off his glove and was about to put his hand on the dermal detector pad before Kid Flash rushed forward and blocked him.

"Let me try. I haven't used one of these yet to confirm that I'm recognized"

Robin shrugged and gestured with his hand. Go to it. Kid Flash pulled off his red glove and put his hand down on the light gray, rectangular pad. "Kid Flash" he declared into the hidden wall microphone. Green lights flickered rapid fire beneath the pad, shooting to first his fingertips then over his whole hand in 2 seconds. The heavy doors released with a gust of air as a mechanical sort of female voice declared. "Kid Flash . . recognized".

"Cool" said Kid Flash and he followed Robin inside. The room was huge, a hundred fifty by a hundred fifty, he guessed, and at least 20 feet high, maybe more like 30. He rubbed at the walls. They and the floor were covered with a slightly tacky blue gray material, sort of a rubber, sort of a plastic and very resilient looking.

"What configuration do you want to play in?" asked Robin.

"Configuration?"

"The walls, the floors, the shape of the place. It can be shaped to simulate a street and alley city layout or more of a warehouse layout or a few different other ones, or we can just leave it wide open. For a first lesson, how 'bout wide open"

Kid Flash nodded. Sure.

"Before we start, we have to set some ground rules. No super speed. Agreed?"

"Agreed"

Robin gave him a funny look that Kid Flash couldn't quite decipher. Damn mask. "But you have to be aware" said Kid Flash, "that there's no definite line distinguishing a super speed punch from a regular speed punch. It's not an on/off switch. That's not how my power works. But I'm here to get better. I give you my word that I'll try not to do anything faster than you"

Robin nodded.

Kid Flash sniffed and smiled with a shake of his head.

"Yeah?"

"The night of the interview," said Kid Flash adopting a fighting stance, "after you told me 'don't call us, we'll call you', I wanted to beat the hell out of you so bad I could taste it, as much as I've ever wanted to beat up anyone." He meant it as an ironic admission. Robin understood that, didn't he?

Up in the great room, Cyborg, was turned to Raven. "You're sure you don't want a waffle? They're really good. New guy thinks so, too!"

"The new guy thinks everything tastes good. His appetite's some kind of cruel joke inverse ratio to his waist size"

"Where is KF? Has he been in yet?"

"He went down to the Comm Sims room with Robin"

"With Robin! I don't think that's such a good idea. Those two didn't exactly hit it off right away and I don't think things are completely fixed yet."

"Well, KF said it was just a lesson"

"A lesson! Robin's idea of a lesson is that he kicks your ass and you try and learn a lesson from how he did it. Come on, let's go to the observation booth just to be safe."

Robin took up a fighting stance. So, you wanted to beat the hell out of me, huh? Well, after being made to look like the bad guy, after my team turned against me to vote for you and pressured me into voting for you, I wanted to do . . thissss, thought Robin. He took one running step and leaped across the 20 foot divide between them, "Yah!" spinning in mid-air and kicking Kid Flash flush on the jaw sending him tumbling off to one side. He took up a controlled position three steps from Kid Flash with a hand on a smoke birdarang and a net birdarang at his belt waiting for a super speed attack but Kid Flash just got up at normal speed and took up a fighting stance again. Robin jumpedforward, spun and kicked. He was surprised that he got part of Kid Flash. He hadn't moved quickly enough to dodge the kick. Kid Flash swung at him and Robin blocked it easily. It was an undisciplined punch, it left Kid Flash open to an uppercut which Robin delivered with all the force he could muster to Kid Flash's ribs.

"Ooof!"

Robin went from low to high counting on instinctual reactions and getting just the movements he expected, opening up Kid Flash to the right cross to the nose with which Robin hit him. Kid Flash groaned and fell backward but Robin gave him no room. He advanced on fallen Kid Flash and kicked him across both shoulders then under his side, lifting Kid Flash off the floor to fall flat on his face 10 feet away.

"Pathetic, West. Pathetic. Where's your plan? How tall are you?"

"Five . . eight and a . . half" said Kid Flash between uncomfortable breaths.

"And how much do you weigh?"

"I was 127 at the physical"

"Jesus, West. That's a half inch and 5 pounds less than me. You shouldn't get the crap beat out of you by a guy only that much bigger than you"

Kid Flash stood up. He motioned with both hands. Come on! Robin smiled ever so slightly. He'll cheat at some point but before he does I'll make hotshot pay.

Robin advanced on Kid Flash slowly this time and took him down with no kicks at all, only punches. He smirked at how easy it was. Get outside of his front foot and hook him. He crashed three of them almost uncontested into Kid Flash's head. When he knocked him down he gave him a kick and shouted at him.

"Wrong! You CANNOT let your opponent outside of your point like that! That'll kill you every time"

He got to shout another seven sets of tactical pointers to Kid Flash. "Combinations, West! Combinations! You form your opponent's reaction with the first move, waiting to nail him with the second! You walked right into that left hand, West!" "If you don't show me that you respect that kick and can stop it, why should I stop planting my heel in your face, West! Develop a counter for god's sake, West!"

But even with these instructions, it was clear that this was a beating being administered more than a lesson being taught. It seemed that way to the other Titans watching in the observation room just below the ceiling of the two and a half story room. They'd been there from the start but Robin and then Kid Flash only realized it after the 5th of the 9 knockdowns meted out to Kid Flash.

Robin saw the looks on their faces. Ugh. He was the bad guy again. Hotshot was turning the team against him again! Wait till he wimps out and cheats and goes to super speed! They'll see what he's made of!

But he knocked him down a 6th time with a punch like a sword fight thrust and still, Kid Flash just took it. He knocked him down a 7th time with a wrestling style leg sweep and then a series of kicks. Kid Flash got back up. He knocked him down an 8th time with a series of spinning punches like a tornado with green gloved fists at its outer wall. And finally, he knocked a wobbly Kid Flash down with an elbow to his face after he'd blocked a punch. He kicked Kid Flash under the chest and gave the gasping for breath on all fours speedster a kick in the butt. Kid Flash was not only bloodied and bruised but tired. He hadn't used super speed but he also hadn't eaten since lunch the previous day. He was at least six meals behind his usual requirements and feeling it.

"Wrong again, West! Wrong! Never forget that an opponent has many more striking surfaces than just his fists and toes. The elbow is as good an impact point as any on the body"

Robin stood ready to try and fend off the expected super speed rush, both hands on special birdarangs. He might've guessed that Kid Flash felt that way after the interview. But Kid Flash didn't rush him, at any speed. He rose, uncertainly to his feet. "Let's go" he said to Robin.

Robin glanced up at the observation room. His teammates looked horrified. Damn! He's making me look bad again. He set his jaw and advanced before the sound system came on with a click.

"Robin! What're you doing?" pleaded Cyborg's voice. " He's done"  
"Please teammates! Do not simulate a combat any further especially with beaten Kid Flash not using his only defense"

Robin stopped and bit his lip. Again! Again, he makes me out to be the bad guy. I don't believe it. I can't believe he never tried to cheat.

Robin was stationary but wobbly legged Kid Flash moved forward. He got to two feet from Robin and threw a roundhouse punch that Robin simply deflected with one elbow and Kid Flash fell to the floor again. He got up to all fours as Robin stood over him.

"I thought you were going to use super speed"

" . I . . agreed . . not to"

"But you said you were dying to beat the crap out of me"

"I did . . I was . . I am" said Kid Flash and he got to his feet again.

"But . .?"

"If the lesson's done, showers are that way, right?" he asked pointing to another set of heavy doors across the com sims room.

"Yeah" said Robin getting a good look at the damage to Kid Flash, two blackened eyes, a nose that might be broken, two split lips, a face full of bruises, and bruised kidneys to go with bruised or cracked ribs. Ugh. He'll look like crap for a week and the others'll never forgive me

"You okay?" asked Robin jogging a few steps to catch up to him.

"Yeah . . fine. Thanks for . . the uh lesson" he grunted and kept walking to the doors. Robin exhaled, wondering what was the best thing to do just as Beast Boy and Cyborg came running into the com sims room from the doors by the elevator.

"What are you doing man?" asked Cyborg. "Without super speed he's just a skinny kid. So, you take advantage of that and beat up on him?"

"You've got some serious damage to repair with Raven and Starfire" added Beast Boy.

"He-he asked for a lesson and he agreed not to use super speed. "

"You didn't have to do all you did" said Cyborg and Beast Boy nodded.

"But, he-he told me how much he'd wanted to beat me up before we started. I-I was sure he'd cheat and use super speed"

"Maybe he thought it wouldn't be effective against your power of being super over aggressive, Robin" said Beast Boy then he and Cyborg headed to the showers as well.

"I . . I didn't really want to hurt him" mumbled Robin but they were out of earshot.

Kid Flash was in the showers. His black eyes were almost back to normal. His split lips had nearly healed. The bruises on his face were just faint discolorations. He touched his fingers to his broken nose. Nearly fixed, too. His ribs and kidneys were still a bit sore as the pulsing jets of the massage shower hit him but not so badly as to have to turn it off or step out. He lathered his body and thought about what went on in there.

He thought I'd cheat. In fact, he was certain of it. He kept reaching for his utility belt after knocking me down as if he'd have to defend himself. Maybe he was even trying to provoke me into cheating. No matter what, this is way out of hand.

"Hey KF!" He heard Gar's voice echoing off the tile and squinted through the spray to see his green teammate there

"Are you . . um . . whoa! . . are you uh okay? Looked like you took a lot of punishment in there"

Kid Flash turned off the shower and caught the towel tossed to him by Beast Boy. "I'm okay"

"You're sure"

He nodded. "I heal really fast too"

Beast boy nodded and backed away around the corner of the wall to the hallway leading out to the Com Sims room. Cyborg went past him. "Is he there?"

Beast Boy morphed himself into a powerful green stallion and raised up on his back legs and swayed from side to side.

"What the hell's the matter with you?"

"Dude!" giggled Beast Boy and he pointed around the corner.

Cyborg advanced only a couple steps. Kid Flash was drying off at the nearest locker and catching his breath.

"You had us a bit worried watching upstairs with how much you were getting hit there, KF"

"I'm fine. See" he said pointing to his now almost unmarked face "almost gone already"

Cyborg raised an eyebrow. "Super fast healing too?"

"Something like that"

"Alright. Well you and Rob have gotta talk things out so that nobody's trying to break out a can of whupass on anybody else in the Com Sims room or anywhere else."

Kid Flash nodded. And he glanced around at the facilities. "God, this place is so cool. That shower! And it's so cool that it's only Titans here, no immature kids like in school"

Cyborg nodded. "Hey look" said Beast Boy over his shoulder and Cyborg looked around the wall corner to see a huge green bear apparently doing a chippendale's dancer routine the way it was standing on its back legs and swaying its hips. Cyborg swatted at it. Kid Flash was now in uniform and at his side. A second later, they were joined in walking out by a conspicuously whistling Beast Boy. They went up the elevator together but Kid Flash got out at level 1. He told them he was going to get his stuff and zipped out of the elevator and lounge, a red and yellow blur.

Cyborg and Beast Boy went up to 14 where they immediately ran into Raven and Starfire.

"Has he calmed down?" asked Cyborg of Starfire.

"Well, it didn't help the way she yelled at him" said Raven to Cyborg then turning to Starfire. "A torzorf blangthorp? Don't you think that's a little over the line?" she deadpanned, having no idea what those terms meant.

"If he will press his advantage against an opponent who bravely does not use his, then he is worse than a torzorf blangthorp. He-he is a male offspring of a female earth dog"  
"Whoa! Whoa! Time out!" declared Cyborg with an emphatic hand gesture. "Robin is not a son of a bitch and he's not a torgor blangthorp"

"Oh, please, Cyborg. As mad as I was I didn't call him a torgor blangthorp. Give me a little credit for self control, teammate!"

"Sorry. I really should know some of these terms by now. But Kid Flash is fine. He heals about as fast as he runs. And he and Robin are gonna straighten things out"

"What if they can't?" asked Raven. "What if these two boys are just never gonna be able to work together?"

"That's silly. It won't come to that" declared Cyborg.

"Really?" said Raven. "When was the last time Robin did something undisciplined? And now he's going out of his way to kick a teammate's butt"

"But the teammate didn't give it back to him so we've got a good chance to fix things"

Two hours later, Kid Flash had carried all his books and clothes across the bay to Titans Tower and up to his room. He'd gotten a bite to eat, just a couple meals, and had reached Aunt Iris on her cell phone. She was ecstatic. He could feel how she would hug him even from a thousand miles away. And she vowed to be at the party the next day with Wally's Uncle Barry, too. He didn't realize anyone was watching him till he hung up the phone and turned and saw Starfire right there.

"Your eyes are watery, teammate"

Wally sighed and blinked a few times and he turned away from her.

"Do you find that embarrassing?"

"A-a little I suppose" he said turning away from her as she approached from the opposite side, wanting to walk away but not wanting to be rude.

"But you love this Aunt Iris don't you?"

"I . . um . . "

"Yes, you do. You were excited to call her. I saw the look on your face when you picked up the phone. And then when your news made her very happy, that, in turn, pleased you very much. Isn't that when you know that you love someone, that their joy gives you joy?"

Now KF really had to blink. He brought his thumb and index finger to the corners of his eyes.

"Are you ashamed of that? Is that somehow weakness to be ashamed of?"

Kid Flash took a long, deep breath. "No-no. It's not. I-I love Aunt Iris. She's very important to me. She . . made it possible for me to be here. I love Aunt Iris."

"She will be here at the party tomorrow?"

Wally nodded.

"You will both be made very happy"

He nodded again and smiled. "Thanks" he said then zoomed off to his room. He let out a deep sigh. So, maybe she's not such a ditz, huh? He'd wanted to go to Robin's room but not in that condition. He composed himself then went around the hall to Robin's room on the other side.

He knocked twice on the door. There was no immediate response. He knocked two more times. The dark navy door cracked open just a sliver. Robin looked out, first surprised then animated by some other emotion.

"I know, I know. Star then R. But I wanted to talk to you in person"

Kid Flash tried to decipher his expression. It was so much harder with the mask obscuring his eyes. It, at least, wasn't the expression with which he'd opened the door the day before.

"You don't want to kick my ass super speed style?" Robin smirked.

"Well, yeah, part of me does but that's not what I'm here for"

Robin threw the door open. "Come on in" he said and then closed the door behind KF. KF looked around. The room was in perfect order. It was immaculate. The furnishings were pretty basic. There were a couple extra bookcases to each side of the bed, a poster of Bruce Leeand on a small table were what looked like parts of a utility belt and some birdarangs as well as an extra mask, but all neatly in place, somehow. There was an extra chair on each side of the room and Robin took one and set it at the foot of the bed. Kid Flash took the other and they sat down a foot apart.

"This is stupid" began Kid Flash. "You and I . . " he pressed his one fist against his other.

"I agree. I-I don't know how I got caught up in this. I-"

"Well, I want to blast this out of the way now and not just paper it over with a handshake. You and I had a-a thing right from the start"

"Exactly. Instinctive"

"I-I got this extreme negative reaction in that first moment of my interview and that's stupid."

"I had the same thing. I wanted to kick your ass at the interview"

"Same here" admitted Kid Flash. "And especially afterward"

Robin chuckled.

"So, why don't we get everything out on the table and we'll sort through what's true and what's crap and see if we're really enemies or if we've both been idiots"

Robin mulled that over. "Okay"

"Hit me first. Don't be afraid. I'm an adult. Where's all the dislike coming from?"

Robin sighed. "To me, you give off this whole cocky pretty boy vibe I just can't stand. I mean, the uniform. Nobody else's uniform here is that tight. It's like you're trying to show off your ass to the girls. And, christ, Fed Ex doesn't make as big a deal about presenting apackage as you.The whole deal is just too over the top. But that's a side issue. You're cocky and arrogant and you goof around in the middle of fights. I've seen-we've got footage Cyborg ripped from the HIVE security cams and you're fighting them but pratically posing for pictures. You don't come across as all that bright. You don't seem focused. You're not serious. You're coasting. Where the hell was your head this morning? It-it drives me nuts to see guys like you who were given the most incredible gifts in the world but who don't work on 'em, who coast with 'em. So, um, I guess because you're cocky, vain, arrogant, complacent and lazy. You're not really dedicated to doing this right. You're a cocky, flaky, skinny, pretty boy jerk. That's why I don't like you"

There was a long pause between them.

"No really. Don't hold back"

Robin chuckled. "You asked!"

"I don't mind. Look. The uniform was given to me by Flash. And my whole game is speed. I have to have no friction. The suit's a special material that Flash came up with and it has to fit almost like a second skin. If I run a thousand miles, do you know how many running strides that is? I can't have my uniform bagging or shifting or moving on me. The friction would make what I do impossible. And usually I'm running so nobody really sees me. Yeah, it's a tighter suit than most everybody out there but it's tight for a reason"

"Alright, see, I didn't really appreciate that."

"And not all that bright? Jeez.You saw my grades and scores in my file"

"Yeah, I saw your grades and test scores. I was surprised how good they were"

"As for not dedicated. Aaarrrrggghhh! I've ruined my life to do this. I almost literally ruined my life for this. When this happened " he said gesturing to himself in his uniform. "I was 11 and a half and I had three or four really close friends and another dozen or so a little less close. Teachers thought I was great. By the end of school a few days back I have zero friends. None. I couldn't keep my commitments to anybody. I'd say I was going to be at my friend Aaron's house to work on our science project and a call would come in and I'd spend most of my night helping to track down Gorilla Grodd or some crook or helping to rescue people from an apartment building fire. I-I started to have a pretty clear choice after a couple years of this, have friends or do this. And I've been doing this. Not dedicated just . . just floors me!"

"I didn't-"

"The officer at the call desk at City police headquarters told me two months ago that I'd answered a hundred fifty seven calls. You know how many times they called me, how many times my ring zinged on my hand twice for a police call in that time?"

Robin shook his head.

"A hundred fifty seven. I answered every frigging call that came. They didn't know who I am or where I am. They couldn't make me come running if I didn't want to. But I came running every single time. Every single one. And that doesn't even count calls from Flash or the dozens and dozens of times I was already on the scene and that got radioed back to headquarters so they didn't bother to put out a call for me. And it doesn't count all my patrolling. I probably patrolled the city at least four nights a week, on average, probably starting out at a night or two when I was 11 up to most every night recently. I brought over two dozen books with me from my room at home. You know what they all are? They're all technical trade books and engineering textbooks and ballistics books. That's what I read. That's almost all I read. I'm trying to learn more to be able to solve cases. The Forensic Ballistics Handbook. The Abstract of Physical Security Systems. So, if you want to tell me I'm not dedicated when I did just about everything physically possible and destroyed every friendship I had and made my civilian life almost unbearable, well, then I want to know just what dedicated is"

"I . . I didn't know. I'm sorry. That was just the impression I had. You're so, I don't know, casual, sometimes"

"You know what this does to me?" KF asked, gesturing to his uniform.

Robin shook his head. "What do you mean?"

"Super speed. You know what it does to me? I mean, physically. I don't really know in any detail and that's pretty embarrassing to admit. But you know how it makes me feel? It makes me feel great! I feel great after running a hundred miles at super speed. I feel euphoric. It makes it a little difficult for me to concentrate sometimes. I feel terrific using my speed, so terrific that I have to combat it and make myself concentrate. I don't just choose to sometimes make jokes or not be 100 percent grim determination. I'm chemically pushed to it by my own body, by whatever it is that's going on in my body when I use super speed."

"I-I never thought of that, that using your power might affect you that way"

"Well, it does. I try to keep it in control but I don't always. And that-that footage you talked about from the HIVE is when I met Jinx. I-I wasn't ready to fight this morning because I was with her last night, not because I'm a space cadet or something. Being Kid Flash is my whole life now. Wally West is just a-a sort of backup identity or something. I wanted to join the Titans so that I could talk about this thing that I do that's become my whole life. It was driving me nuts not being able to talk to anyone about what really counted in my life"

Robin let out a long slow exhale. "Okay. Maybe-maybe I . . no" he sighed again. "I-I did misjudge you. So, um, what were you thinking that you immediately had an aversion to me?" Robin asked, wincing.

"Come on" laughed Kid Flash. "You have to take your medicine, too"

"Alright. Alright"

"Well, my first impression was that you were the power tripping highway cop who gives a ticket for going 66 in a 65 zone, that you don't know when to back off, that you enforce the rules even when that doesn't bring justice to the situation, that you like bossing people around because you're a control freak and that you think you're better than other people who aren't as uptight as you, that you're a nasty little jerk".

Robin's eyes were wide open. "Do-do people really perceive me that way, that I'm . . that I'm that bad?'.

Kid Flash nodded. "Look. I don't know you but, well, the same way you said it. That's the vibe you give off, at least to me, powertripping unreasonable insensitive control freak cop".

Kid Flash thought Robin might respond right away with denials but he was lost in thought for several moments absentmindedly running a hand through his spiky hair and staring open mouthed to one side as if in shock..

Hmmph. I don't believe this! I've become him. I've become him! H-how did things work around to this, wondered Robin? He remembered times of absolute fury at the insensitivity of his training. Not good enough. Try harder. Not good enough. Try harder. Notgoodenoughnotgoodenoughnotgoodenough!. I-I don't do that, do I? I'm not Batman. I'm not! I . . But he thought of himself in the Com Sims room berating Beast Boy and hectoring Starfire. He remembered being so quick to think they had screwed up and let Slade escape when Slade hadn't even been alive.

He turned to Kid Flash. "Um, look. There's there's some truth in that, just like there's some truth in you being a flake, but there's a reason for me just like there is for you. Around the same age as you became that, I became this. My-my parents were killed-"

"Oh man. I'm sorry"

Robin nodded. "I went to live with-with Batman. Never mind all the details. I got taken in by Batman and I wanted to be part of what he did. So, he trained me. And trained me. And yelled at me and beat the crap out of me almost as bad as I did you and yelled at me. And I-I got like . . like . . nothing, nothing in the way of comfort or affection or kindness"

"I know what that's like"

"Well it sucks. I don't wanna sound all touchy feely but it" he closed his eyes. "It really really sucked. But maybe that's the only leadership style I'd seen. I-I try not to be him but maybe sometimes I unconsciously follow that-that style. I know I shouldn't. I don't want to, but it's the model that I have and I suppose I slip into it at times and go overboard pushing. But there's another thing"

"What's that?"

"Can-can you go through that wall?" he asked pointing to the wall by the door.

Kid Flash nodded, with certainty.

"Do it. Please"

Kid Flash shrugged, ran toward the wall and vibrated his molecules to pass through, stopped out in the hallway then vibrated his molecules to pass back through the wall and took his seat again opposite Robin.

"God! Can you imagine how that looks to me? That's physically impossible! That's supposed to be physically impossible. My teammates can do things that are physically impossible. You can pass through walls and run impossibly fast. Starfire flies and throws bolts of energy. Raven casts supernatural spells and travels in spirit form. Cyborg's the closest other thing to normal and he's got two dozen different weapons built into his arms and legs. And then there's the bad guys, I won't even start cataloguing all the crap all of them can do. And I've got-I've got nothing on that scale. I run fast. I know, like a snail to you, but fast for everyone else. I jump well, I'm acrobatic. I know jeet kune do. Everybody else, KF, every single other person we encounter has me outgunned. You know what kind of pressure that puts on me? I can never let up. I can never exhale. If I do, someone souped up like you will take me out. If I seem like an uptight hardass, maybe it's because I have to be one. I have to be one because I don't have a power or an edge like everyone else does. Can you see that?"

Kid Flash nodded. "Okay. Maybe you deserve some slack. But, just one thing"

"Yeah?"

"You know my name but I don't know yours?"

Robin sighed. "It's Grayson. Dick Grayson"

"You go by Dick and not Rick or Rich or Richard?"

"I haven't gone by any of those in a long time, Wally, not since my parents died-"

"Again. I'm sorry"

It's alright. I'm-I'm stable about it. But they used to call me Dick"

Wally extended his red gloved hand and it was shaken by a green gloved hand. "Nice to meet you, Dick Grayson"

"Nice to meet you, Wally West"

"Wanna get a bit to eat? I'm starving" said Wally putting his chair back as Robin did likewise.

"You're always hungry, aren't you?"

"Pretty much, yeah. It's part of my deal"

"You know, you were wrong about one thing"

"What's that?"

"You said doing this was leaving you with no friends"

"Awfully quiet down there" said Raven from the couch in the great room.

"I think quiet's good" said Cyborg.

"Plenty of quiet ways they could be killing each other, too" she replied.

"I am quite certain that our Robin and our Kid Flash will be the best of friends" said Starfire.

Raven raised an eyebrow. "Best of friends? The betting line is bitter rivals with an over under of three knockdown drag out fights. I think I'll take the over"

"You do not understand young men, teammate Raven"

Her raised eyebrow coincided with the ding of the elevator doors opening. Kid Flash and Robin emerged from it deep in a friendly but serious conversation abouttheir respective additions of the Abstract of Physical Security Systemsand then both laughing at a joke of KF's.

Starfire turned to Raven. "Perhaps some day I will teach you my wisdom, teammate Raven."


	16. At the Horizon

Author's note: Last chapter. It's a bit long but I've already cut out some parts to try and make it reasonable length. Thanks again for the kind words, reviewers. As a complete praise whore, I soak 'em right up.

The speed with which the birthday party and celebration of Titans membership for Kid Flash morphed into a much larger affair amazed Raven. One minute they were discussing getting a cake for Kid Flash, and asking him what kind he liked. Not surprisingly,the boy with the illogically gargantuan appetite turned out to like every kind. But just minutes later it seemed they were plotting the largest get together of superheroes in recent memory.

And it was Robin, of all people, who was the driving force behind the idea. Robin, the guardian and guarantor of Tower security talking about making the party much bigger, talking about having 30 or 40 guests. This was Robin, who was known to go ballistic if anyone left the setting of the windows in their private quartersat transparent instead of opaque, the windows in the 13th floor quarters of a building on an island a half mile into the bay, Robin was inviting people left and right into the Tower. Who are you and what have you done with Robin, thought Raven while watching him.

"We don't do that sort of thing enough," said Robin. She raised both eyebrows. Robin . . suggesting that they don't have enough parties or big enough parties? Robin? "Why do we have to wait for some earthshaking calamity to all get together? Why don't we invite every young hero who can make it to the Tower to celebrate."

Raven turned to a giddy Starfire. "See. Kid Flash killed the real Robin. The one spouting these lines is obviously an android." Starfire's expression turned cold. Jeez. Tough room. Raven stared at Kid Flash calmly eating. What the hell did he say to him in his room? The orange haired pretty boy must be awfully persuasive. First straightening out Jinx and now this!

But he barely said anything. He just ate. And ate. And ate. Footage of it could be used to torture dieters, she decided, watching him shoveling in forkful after forkful and still have a tiny waist and look like he didn't have an ounce of fat on him beneath his tight uniform. It could run on a loop in special punishment rooms at Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers. She imagined screams of chunky horror at the sight of the sleek boy with the supersonic metabolism munching away to no effect.

But he didn't much add to Robin's plan. Beast Boy and Cyborg did till the idea grew and grew and Robin was jumping up from the table and running to the communications center. "I've gotta make some calls quick!" he said bringing up the 60 inch communications screen.

The first call was to Bumblebee and Titans East.

"Bee! Robin here" he began as the giant screen in front of him filled with the image of her standing in front of Speedy.

"What's up, Robin?"

"Bee, I know this is short notice but we're going to be having a joint birthday part and celebration of new membership for Kid Flash here tomorrow starting at 6-"

"Beat us to it, Robby. We were thinking of offering him membership in East. Roy and Garth were pretty interested in having him on the team. They thought he'd be a great mentor for Mas y Menos, showing them the super speed ropes and all."

"Sorry Bee. Too late. But what we were thinking is that we don't ever have any big get togethers. So, we wanted to invite Titans East and some other heroes to the Tower tomorrow. What do you think?"

Bumblebee and Speedy looked back and forth shrugging. Why not? "Garth? What do you think? . . uh huh . . okay . . Yeah! . . . Well, Robin, the consensus here is that you've caught us at the perfect time. On top of which, I agree. We only all get together when there's some giant calamity. Bring your new boy forward."

Whoooosh! Kid Flash was immediately standing next to Robin smiling.

"Hi, guys!"

Bee, Speedy, Aqualad, and Mas y Menos all said hi (and hola) back. "How old are you gonna be, Kid Flash?"

He smiled a bit bashfully. "I'll be 15 tomorrow."

"Well, Titans East will be there tomorrow to wish you a happy 15th birthday. See you then, Kid Flash."

But that was just the start. Using the giant video screen, Titans communicators and plain old phones, Robin called Argent, Bushido, Herald, Hot Spot, Killowat, Lightning, Thunder, Pantha, Wildebeest, Arrowette, Wonder Girl, Bat Girl, Super Boy, Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel and more with invitations to the party. Every single one accepted and was invited to bring a date if they wished. Even the short notice didn't turn out to be much of a problem as it was arranged for some to pick up others where necessary. Everyone agreed that it was a great idea and complimented Robin. They all agreed that the hero community didn't do enough to take advantage of the opportunities for positive get togethers.

Well, a party would certainly have music, so Beast Boy approached the sound system controls for the great room which included a 21 inch screen listing songs available and chosen but found Cyborg was already setting up a folder called "birthday bash" and loading songs into it.

"Aw man!" Beast Boy complained. "This guy heard most of those songs when they came out," he said and morphed into a green velociraptor before quickly turning back into slender, green Gar.

"These are classics, BB! What's Going on? Theme from Shaft. Ain't no Stoppin' Us Now. Samba Pa Ti by Santana. I got some Philly International, some Al Green. You should like Al Green! Let's Stay Together. Get it, Al Green."

"Ha ha."

"This stuff is gonna be played with the great room opened up for dancing, little man. So, your grungy, scream till your throat bleeds rock ain't gonna cut it. Can't be danced to and not wide enough appeal."

"Well, there's stuff with wide appeal more recent than that!" said Beast Boy moving to the console now that Cyborg stepped asideand picking out songs from the screen display and loading them into the folder.

"Hmm. Getting' Jiggy With it. Everybody likes that. Touch the Sky by Kanye. Check. Crazy in Love. Check. Los Lonely Boys. New Radicals. Outkast. Ooo yeah, Outkast. I'll load a few of those. Hmm. Madonna. She's such a fraud . . fake english accent, yeah right . . you were born in Detroit, bitch . . but we'll give the girls a couple of hers. Oh! Cy! Dude! Without me! Remember the look on Robin's face when he saw that video? Eminem doing him slouching down in the Batmobile and slouching down some more and . . ! Hehehe!" He continued picking songs before turning to Cyborg. "Why such old stuff for yours, dude?"

"That's the stuff we played in my house growing up."

"You didn't have any control over the radio or stereo did you?"

"Uh . . no. Momma chose the tunes. But she chose well."

"Well, even though they are dinosaur tunes, they are good ones, I've gotta admit," said Gar continuing to pick songs.

"Oooo how bout that one at the bottom of the scroll," suggested Cyborg. "Perfect for you and Rae."

Beast Boy gave him a furious SHHHHHH! look. He checked the bottom of the scroll. En Vogue-My Lovin'. "What song is that?"

Cyborg smiled and sang the chorus. "Yer never gonna get it. You know yer never gonna get it. You know yer never gonna get it. Not-"

Beast Boy morphed into a huge green ape and punched Cyborg before changing back. "Not cool dude! Not cool. I'm gonna go see about the food. Robin was talking about getting caterers. I wanna make sure we've got some vegan options."

Cyborg checked over his shoulder that Beast Boy was gone then added My Lovin' to the playlist folder.

And while those two were jousting verbally, Robin was heading back to his room to make a phone call in private. He made sure no one was around then dialed the number, surprised that he had to think a moment to recall what used to be the single number he knew best in all the world. One ring . . . two rings . . . then an english accent.

"Wayne residence. How may I help you?"

"Alfred. This is-"

"Master Grayson! So good to hear from you. It's been such a long time."

"Yeah. I know. It's good to hear you too, Alfred. Is Bruce there? I'd like to talk to him if I may."

"One moment, Master Grayson."

Robin held the phone for a minute suddenly frantic with indecision at how to put the question to him and feeling angry at himself for having changed back into the emotional boy he'd been at just the prospect of speaking on the phone from 3000 miles away.

"Dick? This is Bruce."

"Hi Bruce. Um, look, I won't beat around the bush. The reason I'm calling you is that I want to invite you to a celebration to be held tomorrow night at Titans Tower. We're going to have a party to celebrate our new member, Kid Flash, and his 15th birthday. We're inviting all the young heroes we can and also some other people. I'd like you to come and maybe see that things have turned out okay and that Wayne Corp's contribution to things here has been pretty worthwhile. What do you say?"

There was a very short pause.

"Kind of short notice, Dick. 30 hours and Friday night is the highest crime night of the week in Gotham City. I doubt it, Dick."

Robin sighed. "I-I know I said some harsh things when I left, Bruce, but as angry as I was I-I know that you helped me. Can't we be in the same room again before it's at calling hours at a funeral home or some other unfortunate occasion? I-"

"I told you, Dick! I didn't think so. Don't try and badger me into changing my mind."

-click-

Robin looked at the phone. Jeez. It's fricking free now Bruce! You can be nice to me for free. I'm not around you any more. You won't have to endure the horror of seeing someone to whom you were -gasp- kind. You don't have to see someone who knows you're not unrelentingly grim. You could deny it afterward. Kind words? To Robin? I never said kind words to Robin! Who'd believe me? Who'd think you ever showed normal human kindness?

Robin sighed as he hung up the phone and then ran a hand through his spiky hair. Still seeking his approval three years later. Sigh. What's wrong with me? Stop wishing for what never comes, idiot! It's about as rational as wanting blood from a rock. God! And I was giving off that vibe to KF.

At the same time, another call was being made, to the apartment where Jinx was staying.

"Hello?

"Jinx! It's me, Wally. How's everything going?"

"Great. What's up?"

"How's about I pick you up and bring you over here," he said, leaving unspoken his intention that she stay the night there.

"Sorry. I'd like to but I've got too much to do."

"Too much . . um . . like what, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Your present, dummy. Did you just do a lot of super speed running and make yourself lightheaded or something?"

"No. I-"

"Wally. It's a joke . . the dummy part. But seriously, I'm getting your present ready. I'll see you tomorrow at, what was it?"

"Six, but-but be early. They'll be shuttling people over from the dock at the state park every 15 minutes starting at 5 o'clock."

"Okay. See ya tomorrow, Wally."

"Yeah . . see ya . . Jinx."

He hung up the phone and let out a disappointed sigh. Tomorrow? Why not tonight? She . . she enjoyed it as much! Maybe more. Who can tell? But that giant bed with the terrific quilt and the special memory foam mattress is just waiting. He sighed and reminded himself to not be a jerk. She said she was getting a present ready. He sighed again. This sucks. Is there anything more disappointing than not getting to make love to someone you're in love with?

Back at the apartment, Jinx smiled and squeezed the tube to squirt out some light brown onto the tray amid the other splotches of paint. She stared at it. That's the color that cat, Empress is, isn't it? Satisfied that it was, she thought of him and his tone of voice and laughed to herself. You are sooooo lucky that I'm not still with the HIVE, Wally West. I own your buns, don't I? She took some of the light brown on her finest brush and started painting in Empress, stopping to check the color on the canvas after a few strokes. "Course you own me, too, sex freak," she smiled. "I'd never try to do this if you didn't."

So, instead of being with Jinx, Wally got a tour of some of the areas of the Tower that he hadn't seen, from Beast Boy and started reading. He talked with Robin when he dropped by his room but otherwise lost all track of the time as he became engrossed in his books.

It was late at night when Raven made her way through the halls at Titans Tower on the way back to her room. Her most recent meditation had been exceptionally deep, creating congruence with multiple dimensions. It took a lot out of her, those hours in levitating meditation. When she finished and ascended to normal metabolic and brainwave rates, she felt exhausted and went to the tower kitchen to get a bite to eat. On her way back to her room she saw a shaft of light crossing the hallway coming from the door before hers, Kid Flash's. She decided to check on him. Peeking around the door frame, she saw Kid Flash atop his bed and its covers wearing just small white cotton boxer briefs looking down over the end at a large book. She watched in amazement as he oddly fanned the pages of a thick book so that they all seemed to stand out from the binding at once in a semicircle before slamming it shut. Then he rolled onto his back atop the covers with a grin of delight. The image was enticing. A boy with a body like that mesmerized by books. She sighed and somewhere in the back of her mind was a green eyed feeling, of renewed antipathy for Jinx. She watched him say something to himself then furrow his brow and roll off the bed to the floor and pick out another large book from among a pile of them. This time, with one knee down on the floor and his chest against the other, he did the same trick, seeming to fan out ever page of the book in a semicircle and, perhaps run his hand along the pages at super speed. He nodded slowly in satisfaction and then jumped back from his kneeling position to a standing one at super speed looking right at her.

"Ahh! You surprised me."

"You're in Titans Tower!" she chuckled.

"I-I'm not used to being so safe."

"What are you doing still up?"

"Um, I, are you okay with me being dressed like this?" he said of his tight boxer briefs.

"That's about a swimsuit, a smallish one. So what?"

"I just feel a little funny. I . . it . . accentu- . ." He jumped over to the bed and lay on his stomach. She thought the briefs also accentuated the other side of him, too. Interesting that a boy with such a remarkable body wouldn't quite appreciate how girls see him. This innocence, too, was somewhat enticing. She sat down on the corner of his bed.

"Um, I was reading some books for background knowledge," he said up to his left where she was.

"That was reading?"

He nodded "Super speed reading"  
"At a quarter of two?"

He looked over his shoulder at the clock with a frown of surprise that thenturned to a smile. "Hey," he laughed. "You're up, too."

"Meditating since 9. And seeing as it's past midnight. You're 15. Happy birthday."

"Thanks. I-I kind of lost my sense of time. I'm used to having these limits, sort of guardrails on what I can do, my mother, my sister, school and the need to mow and rake lawns to make money. Now that all those controls are off it's something new for me. How do all of you do it, manage your time, I mean. Do you try to stick to regular schedules or just go by body clock or what?"

"Cyborg and Robin are pretty scheduled but with very different hours. Starfire and Beast Boy are kind of no schedule and I'm kind of in the middle"

"Yeah, I kind of think I'll end up in the middle I'm just adjusting for now. I'm still getting used to all the resources here, the pool and the combat sims room and the fitness center. That special treadmill is great. I never thought one would be made that'd be useful for me. This bed is great, too, so big and what a great mattress. I slept on the same mattress all my life at home. This is like heaven. Oh, and the library is fantastic. Cyborg was showing me all the industrial, engineering and trade books you've got. What a selection!"

"Yeah," she said, looking at the titles on the floor. "Cheng and Vandermeer really didn't get their due from the awards committees for that Contemporary Communications Circuitry. I thought it was much more suspenseful than that last Stephen King book."

He laughed. "I know it's a deadly dull book but . . it has lots of useful information."

"Alright then."

"Um . . Raven?"

"Yeah, um . . KF?"

He smiled. "I-I was going over case files in the computer and I-I saw that you and Jinx, well, you and Jinx were-were um serious enemies. I'm sorry for that. I really am. And that you fought. But she's changed. She's really changed. She has different assumptions about how things should be for her. Will you please grant me this favor? Will you please put aside the past and give her a clean slate? She's nervous about how you'll react to her."

Raven sighed. "You know, she tried to get rid of us."

He nodded. "I read the case file."

"You know that you're asking more of me than you have a right to ask?"

He nodded. "But it's what she needs. That's why I ask."

Raven sighed. "Allright. The slate is clean"

Kid Flash slid over to her corner of the bed and sat up beside her wrapping one arm around her in a hug. "Thank you so much!" he whispered.

"Um . . okay . ."

"Please let me make it up to you in whatever ways I can," he added, looking her straight in the eye, his bright blues the very model of sincerity.

She nodded with certainty while her thoughts were a whirl of ambivalence. Then she said goodnight and got up and left. Jinx!

He had a great night's sleep. It took a little while for him to doze offfor wishing so strongly that Jinx was there with him. But once he did, the special mattress was incredible. He woke up completely rested and refreshed and zipped down to the fitness center. Robin was nearly done his workout but let Kid Flash join him in some boxing and karate work on the heavy bag before finishing up. He told Kid Flash what else he'd done and suggested that he try to do the same overall workout. Kid Flash did, and was exhausted on finishing. The special massage shower felt so good pulsing away at his body. He wondered how he ever lived without the various creature comforts of the Tower.

After breakfast, well breakfasts, three to be exact, a conversation with Cyborg over waffles segued seamlessly, with no such plan, into most of a day being spent with Cyborg watching him upgrade the laser cannon in his arm and talking to him about all the things he was doing. All the intricate innovations Cyborg had made were fascinating to him. What a tremendous show of will! This guy who could so easily have wallowed in self pity was, instead, triumphant. Instead of using handicapped parking spaces, he was getting stronger and stronger. Better laser cannon. Better this. Better that. His augmented physical abilities were incredible. Heck, hewas the power guy, the strength guy of the team. But his knowledge awed Kid Flash even more. What he'd picked up in all his readings was like the knowledge of a chess novice, guessing that it was "the horsey" who moved in an 'L' pattern compared to what circuitry chess grandmaster Cyborg knew.

The day flew by and he was in Cyborg's quarters leaning over the back of a chair watching him when a bell sounded just after 5 p.m. The first guests had arrived. Cyborg gave him a shove toward the door, easily tossing his 127 pounds in that direction. "Go see the guests, KF. I'll be there in a little bit. I've gotta finish this amplification circuitry."

Kid Flash zipped up to the communications center on 14. There, he saw Robin watching on the big screen as the Titans East plane landed on the roof. A minute later, they were down on 14 and everybody was renewing acquaintances. Kid Flash was introduced to all of them. Speedy and Aqualad were especially friendly and he had fun showing off his super speed to Mas y Menos, zooming down the stairs to the entrance door one time and across the bay to the dock at the state park another time. Over the next hour, the others arrived, Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary Marvel as well as a few others flew onto the roof rather than being shuttled across the bay. A few of the other heroes brought dates with them. And by 6 o'clock nearly everyone was accounted for. Kid Flash could barely keep track of all of them. So, he took a half sheet of paper and wrote crib notes to himself at super speed, like "Argent-the other punk super powered girl" and hid it under the wrist of his glove.

Just before 6, Jinx arrived carrying an object wrapped in brown paper. At the sight of her, his pulse started to race and lascivious thoughts danced in his head watching her walk across the room to him with the mystery package. "Your present," she said handing it to him. He was dying to open it and see what it was but had to suffice with a kiss from her and some anticipation. The great room and kitchen were filled with the din of heroes talking and laughing and Kid Flash was the center of it all. This was even more true when Starfire put a huge cake down on a table in the middle of the great room.

Cyborg leaned over behind Kid Flash and Jinx to Robin. "Oh no. Please tell me she didn't-"

"Caterers!" said Robin never looking away from the cake.

"Pffew! I am now ready for cake."

She set up 15 candles on the cake, grinning at Kid Flash and talking about what charming earth ritual this was. Robin was about to step forward and start off the festivities but Kid Flash held an arm across his chest barring him. "My Aunt Iris and Uncle Barry aren't here yet. They have to see this."

"Are you sure they'll be here?"

"She said they would. They have to see this. I know she really really wants to. My uncle's just kind of prone to being late."

"Not fast like you, huh?"

"Um, no, not just like me."

Five minutes later the bell sounded from the main entrance and a minute after that Aunt Iris and Uncle Barry were giving Wally hugs.

"Aunt Iris, Uncle Barry. This is Jinx. Jinx, this is my Aunt Iris and Uncle Barry."

They shook hands in a friendly enough fashion but Jinx could tell that at some point that night she'd be warned that if she did anything to hurt Wally it would swiftly and surely bring about her own death. The look of scrutiny in his aunt's eyes was that intense.

Robin stepped forward shouting for attention to quiet the din. "Everybody! Everybody! Alright. I want to welcome one and all to what I hope will become at least an annual affair. We at the Titans think heroes should meet on purely social occasions too. We're all so dedicated to the great work that everyone here does, that it's hard for us to make time for an occasion like this. But maybe if it's sort of on the calendar as an annual thing it'll be easier to do. And the starting point for this first get together was two things. First, we just added to the Titans, as a full member, Kid Flash."

Enthusiastic applause and a few whistled cheers followed. Kid Flash raised his hand and bowed his head slightly mouthing the words 'thank you' as he did.

"And secondly, this is his birthday. Kid Flash is 15 today."

Hey! More applause.

"So, without further ado," said Robin and he struck an extra long match and lit all 15 candles. Everyone sang. "Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday dear Kid Flash . . Happy Birthday to you!"

A cheer went up, there were shouts that he'd better get 'em all when there were only 15 then Kid Flash blew out all 15 candles seemingly at once and another cheer followed. The cake was cut up distributed and everyone ate and socialized. Wally opened the couple presents given to him. Aunt Iris and Uncle Barry gave him a new black suit by some italian maker that Wally didn't know but that a couple of the girls present repeated in whispered tones. He opened Jinx's present with greater anticipation. It was a painting. He was floored A tremendous effort had obviously gone into it. He asked her when she went to using paints. Just yesterday was the answer. Wally kissed her. It was a painting of the West house, at least what had been good about it. It was looking into his room from the kitchen and inside the room Empress looked out with a very feline gaze of satisfaction, a purr almost audible from the canvas. To one side of the entrance stood Aunt Iris, confident and protective. To the other was Jinx herself with an inscrutable, Mona Lisa smile and the whole scene somehow had a warm glow. Wally kissed her and told her how wonderful it was. He insisted that they go down to his quarters immediately and hang it on the wall. Wally laughed. "You and Empress and Aunt Iris. That's the sum of the good of that home" Jinx told him how many hours she put into it. She was normally a pencil or charcoals sketcher, not a painter but she had to give it a try for this occasion. Did he really like it? Wally kissed her an assured her that it was terrific. They kissed some more and then some more then made their way back up to 14.

Once there, Wally spoke to his uncle for a few minutes. So, Aunt Iris stepped close to Jinx with a smile as they ate cake and ice cream. "I just want you to know that if you do my nephew wrong. I'll kill you" she said looking Jinx right in her pink eyes. "Oh, maybe I can't do it myself. But I'll find someone who can and if I die in the process, I'll have created a charitable foundation with the explicit goal of your demise. I'll start a secret society that believes your death will bring about heaven on earth. My cult will be even more ridiculous than scientology only all the money will go toward your demise. My insurance will name as benefactor whoever wipes you off the face of the planet. I will reach back from beyond the frigging grave if I have to but you will pay the maximum possible price if you hurt him."

Jinx said nothing. The woman was serious.

"On the other side of it, if you really are the one for him and you make my nephew happy then I will be an ally who will never let you down ever. Ever. I will do anything I can for you. Anything. He deserves to be very happy. He's a very special boy."

Jinx nodded. "I understand."

Aunt Iris hugged her and, with the ground rules expressed, didn't give her the same sort of look or tone of voice again that evening.

Talk, over plates of cake and ice cream continued and the natural interests of teenage boys and girls, other teenage boys and girls, were pursued. Cyborg was off to one side deep in conversation with Argent. Hot Spot and Bumblebee walked back and forth between the great room and kitchen with cake and ice cream talking animatedly all the while. Herald and Batgirl weren't paying attention to anyone but each other. Robin and Starfire were together without interruption as were some of the heroes with their dates and other pairs who'd come as dates such as the Marvels.

The booming Tower sound system coming to life only accelerated the pairing off of heroes. When Touch the Sky by Kanye West filled the air on 14, pairs of heroes made their way to the dance floor. KF and Jinx were there at the start and, as she remembered from their first date, he was a natural, not just fast and light footed but with a natural enjoyment of and feel for it. For his part, he thought she was really good, too, though sincere assessment of her dancing would've been impossible to separate from simply enjoying watching her. The next song to play was Ain't No Stoppin' us Now and by that point the dance floor was pretty crowded. Jinx and KF were hemmed into their corner by the windows by Herald and Batgirl and Cyborg and Argent. Cyborg seemed to really enjoy the old favorite coming over the sound system. It was followed by Crazy in Love by Beyonce and Kid Flash really showed off his moves to the beat of the fast horn section of that song.

Cyborg had set the Tower sound system to play the various songs in the "birthday bash" folder in random order. The next one to play was My Lovin' by En Vogue. Beast Boy talking to no avail beside Raven, looked angrily at Cyborg who didn't even notice him, so busy was dancing withArgent. Kid Flash and Jinx both recognized the song right away. He looked at her with a grin and she smiled back. He danced toward her, all smug attitude and fancy little steps then mimed offering her a rose. Jinx, dancing in place, waved her hand emphatically to the music. No! They did that for the rest of the song, Kid Flash making his way around to one side of her then the other, acting smug and stepping lightly all the while then Jinx shaking her head and waving no. Never gonna get neeever gonna get it never gonna get neeever gonna get it! The dance floor partly cleared as other heroes and heroines watched their little play. When the song finished, they laughed and kissed.

The sound system blared one of Cyborg's old school numbers, an instrumental called The Sound of Philadelphia. Kid Flash and Hot Spot were doing the same strut in place step to the energetic music, and the floor cleared out as it became a sort of dance off between them as the other heroes and onlookers watched, clapping and shouting praise for the two most light footed wonders. Both were grinning and obviously enjoying themselves tremendously. Hot Spot threw in a new step and Kid Flash matched him. Kid Flash grinned at him and did an even tougher step. Hot Spot matched it with some difficulty and when the song ended, Kid Flash and Hot Spot slapped gloves and hugged shoulders. Kid Flash backed off the dance floor to one side and looked across the space at Jinx talking to Argent. She glanced his way and they smiled at each other. "Showoff!" she shouted at him and laughed at his modest shrug As the music picked up again, he shuffled in place to getting' Jiggy With It and watched all the happy faces. What a great thing!

He was doing so, for about a minute, practicing his James Brown style slippery foot moves when he was run into from behind, two hands pressed against his backside.

"Hey!"

"Sorry man" said Speedy to him and "Watch where you're going!" to someone behind him.

"Hey! Speedy! Thanks man! That job you and I did with Cyborg ended up being a sort of audition. Thanks, man."

Speedy gave the shorter KF a full hug. "Good for you, little man."

"Hey! I'm not that small!"

"You worked with Kid Flash, too, that time?" It was the voice of Aqualad over Kid Flash's other shoulder.

"Hey, Aqualad!" Kid Flash grinned a hello, but Aqualad also insisted on a full hug.

"I'm sure I mentioned him," said Speedy.

"I have no such recollection."

Speedy shrugged. So what?

"So, hey," Kid Flash interrupted them, speaking over his shoulder as he went back to dancing in place. "You guys really considered having me on your team?"

"Who wouldn't want you with them? We still want you on our team," said Aqualad.

"If you'd contacted me, even up to a few days back, I'd have been your boy."

"Really?" asked Aqualad.

"Yeah, the loneliness of being solo was just killing me. Killing me."

"Hear that? He was desperate for companionship, Speedy. Maybe if you'd contacted him instead of being so busy looking for openings for yourself, he could be on our team."

"You were thinking of going to another team?" KF asked Speedy over his shoulder as he watched the dancers. "What, Doom Patrol?"

"He doesn't know which team he wants to be on from minute to minute," said Aqualad. "Whomever he's with, that's his team."

"Hey, I give everything I've got to my teammates, whoever they are. You know that Garth. I just want the best opening for me," said Speedy innocently. "Everybody looks around. It's perfectly natural. Everybody's interested in every possibility to some degree. They just don't admit it. What seems like the best thing today might not seem so tomorrow."

"But do you have to investigate every opportunity of every sort?"

"You see, Kid? This is how it is in life. People like Garth demand flexibility to do whatever they want but if some else needs more flexibility than that they want to deny it to him."

Kid Flash turned away to let them bicker and watched the dancers. A minute later, Arrowette shuffled off the floor, smiling and saying "Happy birthday" to Kid Flash. As she squeezed past him, he heard Speedy chirp "Hey 'ette! How's it going?"

"You should've been asking that question 2 months ago."

"I tried to call you afterward. I left a message!"

"It-it was just a mistake, Speedy. That's all it was."

"Can any feeling so genuine really be a mistake?" he replied.

Arrowette sputtered but then squeezed on through the crowd.

"The key word for you apparently being 'any'" grumbled Aqualad. "Her too!".

The party rolled on, the combination of Cyborg's classics and Beast Boys more recent songs working perfectly for the euphoric atmosphere and somehow, the punch that had begun as just various juices and soda had become at least 40 proof. Over the several hours of the party, pairs seemed to mysteriously disappear for a little while and Kid Flash smiled hearing someone tell Herald to go to 13 before he went off hand in hand with Batgirl. Only our quarters and empty rooms on 13.

From the edge of the great room, Kid Flash could see across the kitchen to the formal dining room on the other side of the Tower. Flash and Aunt Iris were there looking out at the bay each with a drink in hand. Kid Flash made his way through the crowd, squeezing past Speedy and Aqualad who certainly could have given him more room than that and then shaking hands with Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary Marvel, deep in conversation in the kitchen but who stopped to congratulate him. Robin was two steps back of Kid Flash, wanting to talk to him, but he pulled up short behind a support beam when Kid Flash stopped next to his Aunt and Uncle and they hugged him and patted his head.

This sort of thing always stopped Robin in his tracks now. He realized it. He understood it. He knew or could easily enough guess at its origins. But simple familial or paternal displays of affection paralyzed him. Whether it was envy, anger at Bruce that this sort of thing didn't happen or wistful longing for his parents with whom it had. He couldn't say. But scenes like that mesmerized him now.

"I just wanted to say thanks for everything, Flash," KF said and mock punched the blond haired man. "I only wish we'd patrolled together more."

"What? Really Wally? But . . you made such a big deal about being good enough to be on your own."

"I know. I guess I . . I wanted to get to that level of accomplishment. But after a few missions like that I really would've preferred to be back with you."

The blond haired man chuckled. "Why didn't you say something then?"

"I-I guess I thought I would look like a little baby to run back to your protective cover"

Flash put an arm around Wally's shoulders. "You didn't have to fear that. And I would've enjoyed the company."

"Well, things turned out fine anyway" said KF. "And I want you to know that I'd have never gotten this far without your guidance. Thanks."

Flash hugged him tighter. "You're welcome. You're more than welcome. You know, this job is sort of negative for the most part. You prevent something from happening. You stop something or see that it doesn't happen again. All the measures of your work are in omissions, in the missing or reduced crime rates and things. You're one of the very few positive things I can take any credit for or point to, Wally. I know you're not my son. But I guess I think of you a bit that way and I do it with pride."

Robin watched Wally get kissed by his Aunt and get another hug from his uncle. His uncle? The Flash! His uncle is the Flash! Holy shit. It's like a super speed dynasty, just about. And he made sure to be here. But maybe Friday nights aren't big crime nights where the Flash works, huh?

Robin remained in hiding behind the pillar as Kid Flash went back to dance with Jinx. When he made his way back to the kitchen, he he a momentary glimpse of . . . Nah! Can't be. Can't be, Robin told himself. But a minute later, in the great room, standing beside Starfire he caught another glimpse. At least he thought he did. Even with the face obscuring mask, Robin could almost picture the mocking grin underneath. He left Starfire with apologies and went to that side of the dance floor. But that guy wasn't there. He couldn't be. The image had been so fleeting, he wondered if it wasn't just his imagination. He went back to Starfire and kept an eye out but gradually lost focus talking to her and then dancing with her.

Kid Flash was just leaving the dance floor with Jinx. "We've gotta get you on that dance off show," Batgirl told him. "We could make some money on you," she laughed. "Damn!"

Kid Flash was saying thanks when he caught a glimpse of a box on the counter outside the kitchen. Oh god! Forgot the gift from Flash and Aunt Iris! Kid Flash saw the box there on the counter outside the kitchen and realized he should put it in his room before someone spilled something on his new suit. Whoosh! Whoosh! He sped between dancers and punch drinkers and flirters, grabbed the box and zoomed out to the elevators. Cyborg was there talking to Argent. Hmm. He decided he should take the stairs and zoomed down one flight and into the hallway outside the private quarters. He was one door down when . .

BAM!

Kid Flash collided with something like hitting an invisible obstacle in the middle of the hallway and ricocheted off the wall to the floor. Something fell heavily on top of his legs. He groaned, momentarily dazed and tried to regain clear thought. What the hell? What the hell just happened? He rubbed his head and glanced over his shoulder. Some skinny guy in a tight black suit was lying there face down, limply across Kid Flash's legs.

Where'd he come from? He wasn't there! I know he wasn't there!

"Unnnnnhh" Kid Flash groaned and pulled himself out from under the guy in the black suit. Whoever it was had been knocked out. Kid Flash crawled around to look at him. The guy was sort of on his side now. He groaned slightly then was completely unconscious. Kid Flash inspected him through his mild headache. Hmmph. Skin tight black suit from head to toe. Not very big. Actually, the guy could be my body double. What's with the skull face mask? Costume place sell this guy a Scream knockoff or something? Kid Flash didn't recognize the guy. Was this someone else Robin invited that I didn't know about? Oh man! They're gonna be pissed at me for knocking out another guest, but he wasn't there! He wasn't there!

Then, just as Kid Flash was rising, slowly, to his feet, he was pulled up from behind, by his under arms.

"Hey!"

It was Aqualad. Where'd he come from?

"Are you alright little friend?"

"Jeez, I'm not that small. I'm only a couple inches shorter than you guys, but yeah, I think I'm alright," he said leaning against a wall and holding his head.

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I-I was running down the hall and all of a sudden smashed into this guy. But I swear he wasn't there."

"Probably true, as far as you could tell. His name's Red X, KF and he's got a cloaking device in this suit," said Speedy crouching over the slender, prostrate guy. "This whole suit is a weapon. We've gotta get it off him while we can. Come on, Garth!"

Kid Flash remembered afterward Speedy suddenly producing a couple pair of handcuffs from somewhere and their clinking together from his belt as he and Aqualad pulled of the slender, black clad athletic boy's special gloves and boots and tossed them on top of him before picking up the body. Kid Flash fought against the last wave of headache and remembered a pat on his but from one of the fellow heroes and hearing a door close. He took a deep breath. The hallway was empty. He jogged normal speed around the circle of hallways that surrounded the elevator shafts and utility conduits. There were 12 private quarters rooms of which six were now used by Titans, so there were six more empty rooms to which they might have taken him. There was no one to be seen in the hallway, until Robin emerged, running, from the stairway.

"KF! I heard a sound. Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, I think so. It was the weirdest thing. I was running through the hall and crashed into this guy in a black suit."

"A guy in a black suit!" Robin recalled the couple fleeting glimpses in the great room.

"Yeah. Our kind of suit. Superhero. Skin tight. He was our size. Coulda been my body double, I think. Speedy and Aqualad said he's some guy called Red X."

"Red X! Where is the bastard?"

"Huh?"

"He's a thief, KF! He stole that suit from me. He's not a total villain but he's no hero and he-he goes out of his way to rub my face in it at every turn."

"Well, um, Speedy said that the suit the guy was wearing is a weapon and that they had to get it off him right away. I just turned around and they were gone. Maybecarried him into one of the rooms?I'm not sure which one. Sorry, I got a little hazy for a moment there. It was a heckuva collision."

"So . . Speedy . . and Aqualad . . . have Red X . . ha ha . . ha ha . . . hahahahahahahahahahaha!" Robin first chuckled slightly then ended up doubled over in laughter. This is perfect!

"You're gonna have to explain that reaction to me."

"Later. For now, they'll take care of him. I'm sure they'll call for help if they need it. Let's go back up to the party. And tell me where'd you learn to dance like that?"

KF shrugged. "I always liked to to dance. Even before super speed."

When they got back up to the great room, Kid Flash jumped back onto the floor and danced with Jinx to an Outkast song and then slow danced with his arms around her waist to Let's Stay Together by Al Green. They stepped off the dance floor and she stopped to talk to Argent. Kid Flash stepped further back and bumped into something or someone solid.

"Oh, sorry," he said, and looking over his shoulder saw not a tight uniform or cap or superhero garb at all but a tall, dark, broad shouldered man in a suit. He looked at him quizzically.

"I'm Bruce Wayne," said the man in a deep bass voice as he offered his hand. "Happy Birthday and congratulations on being made a Titan."

Kid Flash shook his hand and said "thanks" as his mind filled with all that he knew about this man. Billionaire. Sort of reclusive except for some charity affairs. He thought of what Aunt Iris had said about him. But her vague implications of sinister doings paled in comparison to the scary vibe the guy gave off loud and clear even while saying "happy birthday".

"Are you a member on the same level as the others?" he asked.

"Yes sir. Technically, we're all the same, but Robin's the unofficial leader."

"Why's that?"

"He just takes it on himself. I guess it's his nature."

The foreboding man nodded. He had another question. "How does someone like you learn his craft?"

"Well, at first I was always at Flash's side. He taught me how to use my powers and everything about how to be a hero."

"You like Flash?"

KF laughed. "Of course!"

The dark, intimidating figure nodded slightly. "Congratulations" he said again. KF thought he heard someone calling his name from the opposite direction and turned to look there for a second. When he looked back, the tall man in the dark suit, the scary billionaire, was gone.

A minute later, Robin made his way stealthily across the landing pad on the roof toward the man in the dark suit looking out over the railing at the edge of the roof to the bright lights of Jump City's skyline across the bay..

"Five steps ago" said the man without ever turning back toward Robin. "Tiny scuff with your footstep"

"Glad to see you could make it here on such short notice to critique my approach, Bruce. Enjoying yourself?"  
"It's interesting to see all the kids and their different powers and how they're adjusting to them. Flash's protege is dating a girl who was clearly a villain, isn't he?"

"Dating might be almost too light a term at this point."

Bruce Wayne's head shook slowly from side to side. "I can only imagine how Flash feels about that?"

"Yeah, I bet that's right, that you can only imagine how Flash feels."

"Maybe so. I certainly put in enough time and effort in your training so that you wouldn't take an incredible risk like that. I cared enough to train you more thoroughly than that."

"That's pretty presumptuous, isn't it, to be so sure that you cared more than someone else? I think Kid Flash is in love with her so I doubt that it mattered what Flash taught him about the risks of a relationship like that."

"I worried, Dick. The best thing to do was to make you as strong as possible and as tough as possible. I like to think that that was accomplished."

Robin waited, scowling at the back of the man in the expensive suit who still hadn't turned to face him. "Same old Bruce. Things are always accomplished in the passive voice. No need to attribute anything to an actual person and give him credit. You'd like to think that that was accomplished? They were just . . accomplished. Let's not get into by whom. Along the same lines, I might say that a ridiculously insensitive style of behavior was displayed in which normal human kindness was completely absent. If I did, I guess I wouldn't be criticizing anyone just like you're not giving anyone credit. Right? Pretty neat how that works, huh?".

"It's good" the broad shouldered figure blurted out.

"What? What'd you say?"

"It's good . . . this" he said gesturing wide with his arms to take in the whole Tower. " . . it's good"

Robin shook his head and waited several moments more to see if he elaborated any further or gave any specific credit. Bruce Wayne had no trouble hearing Robin walk away from him because Robin let his shoes scuff the landing pad surface on every step. Can you hear me now, Bruce?

Down on 14, Robin sauntered into the kitchen, making his way to the fridge. The door closed on the other side of the giant subzero fridge revealing Kid Flash beside Jinx, her arm around his waist. Kid Flash stepped forward and hugged Robin about the shoulders, suspending Robin's search for a juice.

"Thanks for setting this up, man. Great idea"

"You're welcome" Robin smiled. "You're welcome" he added a second time as he and Jinx walked away toward Wally's Aunt and Uncle over by the windows. Thank you's and emotions. What concepts!

Kid Flash approached his aunt with Jinx held tight to his side and what threatened to be a permanent grin on his face.

"Remember what I said the last time I saw you, Aunt Iris, how using my super speed makes me feel like I'll be able to do something impossible and then make my life be what I want it to be?"  
"Uh huh."she smiled remembering what he'd said in the restaurant about his super speed euphoria.

"Well, I did it, Aunt Iris" he grinned. "I reached the horizon!"


End file.
